Your basic premise is wrong. "The party must do action A". The party should never be in a position where they "must do action A". That's rail roading by the GM (and it's a bad thing).
This is nothing but sophistry.
Which method we take has more to do with how hard "X" is to achieve than whatever our average levels are.
And this is ignoring that how hard X is to achieve is based in part on what your average levels are.
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Right, so he was having bad wrong fun because he likes the same game that you do and has direction that he wants to take.I never said he was having "bad wrong fun". I said he didn't mix with us.
He was better off finding another group of munchkins to play with.
A rule is in place that causes a player to leave your group because he's not having fun, and you're not worried? This rule is in place to prevent munchkining, but that's not a problem for your group anymore if this guys isn't there. So why keep the rule in place?
But the 1st level character may have a skill that the previous 10th level character didn't - a skill which affects which strategy we take.
Not one that's relevant in a 10th level campaign, not assuming you have any semblance of a balanced group. Sure, if you had no healing at all before and now you have a 1st level cleric instead of a fourth 10th level fighter, you may have slightly different options (although a 1st level cleric isn't going to be able to make a dent in the hit points of a 10th level fighter even if he uses all his spells and channels). But assuming you're replacing like with like, more or less, your options diminish, not increase. Replace that 10th level wizard with a 1st level bard? Sorry, overland flight is out of the picture now. Sure, the bard can distract or fascinate guards -- maybe, his DC isn't going to be terribly high -- but only for a couple rounds. It's not really going to help against CR 10 encounters.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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With respect, folks, people are posting the solutions to the problem which work for them. I'm certainly not claiming that my solution is a panacea, and neither is Lilith's Thrall.
Be righteous to each other.
--+--
Not a story of a character's death, but a similar issue: when I moved into Iowa a couple of years ago, there was a strong Living Arcanis group who were kind enough to invite me in to play. They'd spent years working on their LA "primaries", and were 11th Level or a little higher.
By the rules of Living Arcanis, because it was a home game session of an Organized Play environment, I needed to build a 1st Level character, my ranger Khalil. True, after one session, Khalil was 2nd Level, and after another two sessions, he was 3rd Level, but a 3rd Level ranger really doesn't contribute jack to a 12th-Level party. Unlike D&D's experience chart, where lower-level characters get more experience for the same encounter than their higher-level peers, characters in Living Arcanis (and Pathfinder) all receive the same amount of xp. Khalil was always going to be 70,000 experience points behind the rest of the party. Worse, because he was "playing out-of-tier", he received half treasure and twice the time-unit penalty.
How long would it take him to get to, say, only five levels behind the rest of the party? When the rest of the party reached 17th level, Khalil would be 12th.
Other PCs tried to "loan" him equipment, but (a) PCs couldn't actually give other PCs gear, and (b) Living Arcanis characters need to be a particular level before gear of a given expence will work. For example, Khalil's cape of the montebank would have been cool, but he needed to be 7th level for it to function.
Once, when Khalil was 6th Level, an NPC invited each member of the party to tell a story of his or her fighting prowess and valor. Khalil said "I have no such tale, great master." The NPC stammered and assured me I was just being modest. "No, master. I tell you true: never have I struck a blow in combat, nor aided my comrades in their struggles." That was an eye-opener for the players who hadn't been paying attention.
Shortly afterwards, the LA rules for playing "out of tier" were revised, and Khalil was no longer a legal party member.
The storylines and characterization in Living Arcanis were fascinating to listen to. But being useless? Kinda sucked, truth to tell.
I said -skill-, not -spell-.
Which is why I didn't only use spells in my example.
And, regardless, a 1st level character isn't going to have a skill check large enough to be significantly better than one person in a 10th level party's default skill check against a CR 10 challenge. A level 1 character's "best" skill is going to range from +7 to +11 (1 rank, +3-5 stat, +0-2 racial, +3 class skill). A level 10's default is going to be in the +5-6 range (assuming there's a character in the party that uses that stat in at least a secondary capacity). A CR 10 challenge is going to have DCs from 20 on up (energy drain traps, for example, are CR 10 and have a DC 34 Perception/Disable Device DC).
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I guess you've never been in a position where you had somebody at the table who wasn't a good fit. I find that surprising.
Actually, I have. Each time the result isn't because of someone's playing style, it is because of their attitude. A person who acts like a jerk shouldn't be at a gaming table in the first place. Live and let live.
Still, if this guy is pouring over books because he enjoys the game and because he's looking for a way to increase his own contributions, what is wrong with that? Shouldn't someone who is behind want to increase their ability to contribute? Shouldn't someone who is doing the mentoring want their wards to be the best they can? I don't see how this is problematic. It sounds to me that you're game would be the perfect sort for munchkining, it encourages people to build the most powerful character they can to keep up.
~Lands, looks, and leaps away.~
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Well, my question is when a PC dies and decides not to raise dead / reincarnate, but create a new character. At what level do you let the new PC join as?
Their previous level?
Their previous level -1 ?
The lowest level of the party?
Level 1?
I usually let a new PC join at the level of the previous character or the average party level, which ever is lower. I played in a game where the DM made everyone start new characters at 1st level and it was a real hassle for the DM and for the players to have a few 1st level pcs runing around when the rest of the pcs were 15th level. the 1st level guys basically spent half their time rolling up new characters.
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I guess you've never been in a position where you had somebody at the table who wasn't a good fit. I find that surprising.
Actually, I have. Each time the result isn't because of someone's playing style, it is because of their attitude. A person who acts like a jerk shouldn't be at a gaming table in the first place. Live and let live.
Still, if this guy is pouring over books because he enjoys the game and because he's looking for a way to increase his own contributions, what is wrong with that? Shouldn't someone who is behind want to increase their ability to contribute? Shouldn't someone who is doing the mentoring want their wards to be the best they can? I don't see how this is problematic. It sounds to me that you're game would be the perfect sort for munchkining, it encourages people to build the most powerful character they can to keep up.
"Contribution" means "to give". A munchkin doesn't pour over books in order to give anything. They pour over books in order to find a way to make their character more powerful.
That's not the same thing.
Don't they have the most to give though? They're powerful enough to contribute, they are trying actively to not be a liability anymore. They have quite a bit to give.
However, I still think that your game encourages munchkining. Short of tight control on everyone's builds, which is a completely different problem, not building a character up to the standards at which the rest of the party plays makes you a clear liability. Whether a munchkin means to contribute or not, he raises himself to a position where he's not such a liability. Your strategy for dying characters, IMO, encourages munchkinism.
Another reason the good ole days weren't.
Sure, we shouldn't be penalized at all for playing badly, or failing to prepare.
This whole new wave of 'there shouldn't be consequences for our actions' is IMHO a bunch of crap. It's a game, with rules. If you play badly there are penalties.
That said, it works fine in 1st/2nd edition. After one adventure (three sessions) a first level character will end up being the party's level -1. Pathfinder is not designed that way however. I am not certain how I would run it, it depends on the house rules I'd use. The system is not set up cleanly to handle player death, hence the lack of any consequences before death and the ease of acquiring raise dead.
The whole idea that people should make choices without suffering consequences is morally repugnant to me. It's also not true that there are not consequences to choices and I see a greater deal of suffering caused due to this type of coddling.
"They're powerful enough to contribute" I don't know what this means. What does power have to do with contributing?
Are you one of those guys who measures a character's worth by the scratches on a character sheet?
If so, that's fine. You play your game similar to Monopoly or Scrabble.
We don't.
Hey, guys. This is a style-of-play disagreement.
There's nothing to even discuss here, you play the game differently.
This exact thing is going on in another thread (the who needs xp thread). What's gotten into people tonight? It seems like we're forgetting that we don't need to play the game the exact same way...
If the whole group at the game table is having fun, it doesn't matter what nerds with too much time type on the internets.
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"They're powerful enough to contribute" I don't know what this means. What does power have to do with contributing?
Are you one of those guys who measures a character's worth by the scratches on a character sheet?
If so, that's fine. You play your game similar to Monopoly or Scrabble.
We don't.
Actually, our emphasis is on roleplaying. You bring the characters back at the closest possible level, make sure that there are backstories for each character if they're wanted, and to have them prepared for the campaign in question. This is what bothers me about your style of play: You're saying that you are trying to encourage roleplaying by essentially banning a munchkin... but use a style of play that encorages it. I'm just trying to wrap my head around that.
Actually, the more I think about this, this may well be -the- source of our disagreement. You play the game like you are playing Monopoly or, perhaps, Magic: the Gathering. You try to put as big a number after each 'plus' on your character sheet.
And if that makes you happy, that's fine.
But you really oughta try to understand that not everyone plays that way. Other ways are good too.
I think your game is the one that actually sounds more like monopoly. I don't know how many times in Monopoly i've given handouts and support to players who had a little bit of bad luck but they can never quite manage to get back to a strong position despite the amount of support they get. Sounds rather like what you've described your game as.
Our emphasis is on building characters that are fun to play and having interesting encouters (diplomatic, interrogation, and combat). Our group keeps our characters at the same level because of several of the reasons that Rezdave and Zurai have pointed out above. I still wonder what kinds of problems this has solved for you as you really haven't described it as having solved anything. Familiarity (as it seems you're arguing) with monsters is completely metagaming, coming up with interesting ways of defeating things you know are coming is not roleplaying. Its a form of munchkinism.
If you're having fun, that's good. Keep playing it that way, I'm just really having trouble understanding where you're coming from since you haven't described what issues you have had with the way many of the rest of us play.
Well in the group I GM for on Monday nights we have used a house rule for some time that the player whose character died (if he/she decides not to have the character raised) comes in with a new character at 75% of their current experience points (adding in the xp that he/she would have earned in the battle that saw the character die.) And that has worked for us fairly well.
This ruling we use works best if it's a medium-to-high level game. I likely wouldn't make an issue of it for low-level games/characters.
And that's my two cents.
Dean; The_Minstrel_Wyrm
Now I'm just getting back into the swing of things, but in my games, it's die and come back at APL-1.
If the death was RP'd to the nines you might get APL or APL+xp.
If it was becasue the player wanted to "leeeroy jenkins" the room (Read as: do something insanely dumb, that is out of char concept), it's a penalty of APL-1d4.
Not that they know any of this. As a DM I make random rolls for no reason so the players aren't in the "Oh he picked up his dice, combat's about to start" mode.
Wow, after reading so many posts, I'm thinking our group is a lot tougher on ourselves than we thought was standard. Our working rule was if you wanted a new character, it came in 2 levels lower than your previous. This was to prevent people(myself included) from making a new character every other session because they just had an idea or found a great combo they wanted to try. Also, this encouraged players to stay the same character, because you had to decide; "do I lose just 1 level from a Raise Dead, or 2 levels for a new guy..."
It worked for a while, but it became counter-productive. We started running multiple campaigns, and it got tougher to keep track of who's who. Eventually, all the DM's in the group eased up a bit. Now it just depends on the style of game; if it's a hack and slash, kill and loot campaign, we usually just come back at the same level to keep the game going. If it's a more involved, story-RP focused campaign, we have new characters come in 1 level lower. Eventually I can easily see us going with "new character same level" just to keep the group the same level.
One time, for a very short bit, we had a randomized level. It greatly depended on what the group average level was, the DM rolled to see what level you came in. It was very experimental, so we tried different dice combos. 10 was the average at the time, so sometimes it was 2d6+2, 1d12+4, etc. So, there was a chance you could come in even higher than the rest of the group. But, like I said, it was very short lived.
My house rules (great players make this possible):
I try to envision folks stripping the boots off their best friend who just died (they're magical of course!), and it doesn't work. It also doesn't work for me to have a 1st level nobody invited to join a heroic 10th level group. ("Eh, you can cast 1 magic missile? Awesome, we really need a mage to take down that dragon and his manticore army.")
Must be nice. I play with mostly CN, NE players and they'll strip your character's corpse clean if they can get some use out of it. They've even used corpses of fallen teammates as distractions and shields.
Wow, I would walk away from the table the instant the DM told me the group got to dictate to me what character to play.
+1.
To the original question, it depends on the death. If you die in an awesome or heroic way, or in a way that is true to the character's beliefs I might be inclined to start you without any penalty. In my Saturday game we had a PC draw desperately from a deck of many things trying to save another PC she loved who'd drawn the void card. She was voided on her first draw. Not going to penalize that. Similarly we had a PC Paladin who was slain holding off a demon of vastly greater power to buy time for NPCs to escape. Not going to penalize that.
If you die due to some minor tactical mistake or bad string of dice luck you'll probably start at a level equal to the rest of the party, but with minimum experience for the level. Examples here would be dying because you chose to fight a group of scrags under water while leaving an enemy above water to rain crossbow bolts on you when you come up for air. You were aware of both, and you (as a party) made an error.
If you do something stupid ("I attack the king!") and die as a result you're likely to come back a level lower, if not more. If you do it consistently you're probably leaving the table.
1) A high level party will not take on low-level members for many reasons. Basically, they are a liability, cannot hide themselves, cannot defend themselves, cannot hinder much less hurt your opponents and so use up your resources in fight-for-your-life situations.I disagree with this for many reasons, but one that trumps all others.
You are sitting at the table with friends (the other players and the GM) - all of whom want everybody to have a good time. If you aren't, you might want to find another game.
We wouldn't be having fun by starting at 1st level when the rest is level *much higher*. Our GM knows this, therefore we start 1 level lower tops.
I mean seriously. As a level 1 in a level 10 fight, you might as well lie down and die unless the GM 'magically' does not have opponent even direct a tertiary attack at you. One hit and you're dead. Period.
Therefore it's not fun unless you play a heavily, extremely heavily RP oriented campaign with little combat or where the GM indeed metagames to protect you. Level 1 players simply have no place in a level 10 party. It's not fun for the level 10 players; it's not fun for the level 1 players and it's not fun for the GM. Oh wait, it is fun for a very short short while. The other players will have some fun in regarding you as their pet they want to protect against the nasties. You will have some fun trying to avoid that one single deadly hit during combat and the GM might have some fu...nah he won't have. It will be draining on his time and effort to keep metagaming you out of harm's way.
Seriously. Players want to contribute. You can't contribute when you can't hit enemies and end up casting short duration buffs on your fellow players. Which suddenly makes you a valid target. And.You.Die.
I typically figure the average level of the PCs and subtract 1-2 from that to be the replacement character level. This means the party definitely takes a hit in terms of combat strength but the new PC isn't toast the second they fight a CR appropriate foe.
Of course that logic raises the spectre of why the character died in the first place...
The remaining tasks are not identical. The remaining goal is.So you're saying that if the party consisted of a 10th level fighter, a 10th level rogue, a 10th level cleric, and a 10th level wizard, they have to do different things to get the Foozle than a 10/10/10/1 level party? They don't actually have to cross the Bog of Eternal Stench because their wizard died?
That really IS metagaming.
No, I didn't say that.
But the 1st level character may have a skill that the previous 10th level character didn't - a skill which affects which strategy we take.
I lol'd. No really. There is, quite literally, no skill a level 1 player has that would benefit a 10th level party unless in your game it's pure RP&TS(role-playing and townships) and you tossed the dice in favor of the player convincing the DM that what he is doing should work (and at that point, why have levels?).
"But what if I made a first level Rogue, traps!" You somehow made it to 10th level without one."But a Bard could be a party face!" Not at 10th level when I presume one of your classes either has a high charisma stat or is a spellcaster who will have access to to mind-hacking spells.
Etc
Your wizard goes around mind hacking everyone he can, hunh?
In lieu of a party face, a Wizard with a Charm spell, or just an Eagle's Splendor to the player that didn't dump Cha would do alright.
You do realize that most mind hacks have a limited duration and that, when the mind hack is over, the victim is going to figure out a method of revenge (which could be anything from killing you in your sleep to bringing law enforcement into play)?
Uncooperative people who are belligerent are likely to get mindhacked. Or just intimidated by the angriest guy with the biggest axe in our games.
Or do you just kill people left and right? Not a good option unless you -like- a never ending stream of the King's sheriffs chasing you down - not to mention a mob of pitchfork and torch welding peasants and the occasional Paladin.
The -only- way your option works is if the game is nothing but hack and slash and, if that's the case, then have fun. Not everyone plays that way.
The only way your original argument - a lvl 1 contributing to a lvl 10 party - works (which you failed to both counterargue and explain in the reply) is if you tossed the dice out the window and are pure rping. At which point you arn't really playing ANY sort of d20 game, much less pathfinder or d&d.
I'm sure that works in your game. In our game, that's a quick way to make a guy who is belligerant into a guy who is an outright enemy.
At which point more exacting mind hacking occurs - physically or otherwise.
Making extra enemies is not good strategy in our game. We have enough enemies as it is.
I assume, then, you removed "Intimidate" from your game. And the result of really bad Diplomacy rolls.
Thus you must go around bluffing people unless you are convinced you can do some awesome diplomacy.But I am still convinced you don't use dice at all in your game at which point your opinion isn't terribly relevant.
At which point more exacting mind hacking occurs - physically or otherwise.At which point, you start developing a reputation of being a cold blooded killer. At which point, noone wants to deal with you - not the commoners, not the merchants, not the nobles, well, maybe the Paladins who want to hunt you down and bring you to justice.
You are ignoring each and every single mention of HOW your game is played.
I am hereby noting that you do NOT play a d20 game and have changed all the rules such that your input in this thread is not really beneficial to a person who IS playing a d20 game.
The -only- way your option works is if the game is nothing but hack and slash and, if that's the case, then have fun. Not everyone plays that way.
AND
The only way your original argument - a lvl 1 contributing to a lvl 10 party - works (which you failed to both counterargue and explain in the reply) is if you tossed the dice out the window and are pure rping.
Again with the absolute statements on style-of-play issues.
Why's it gotta be like this?
If you haven't read that, then stop commenting on posts you aren't reading.
I am personally requesting that you never say this again. Do it for me, bro.
Again with the absolute statements on style-of-play issues.Why's it gotta be like this?
Because it's demonstrable a lvl 1 cannot add anything to a level 10 party in a game based in the d20 system.
Even more so if you EVER have combat.
I've told you how our game is played. If someone dies, they come back at 1st level.
What an impressive nonanswer.
I lol'd. No really. There is, quite literally, no skill a level 1 player has that would benefit a 10th level party unless in your game it's pure RP&TS(role-playing and townships) and you tossed the dice in favor of the player convincing the DM that what he is doing should work (and at that point, why have levels?).