What if, instead of dieing, players ended up back in town without there possessions?
I realized that it wouldn't be realistic.
What are the possible downfalls?
I see quite a few benefits although maybe I'm just super tired.
Players would work together more because no one want to pay for another party members stuff.
Players wouldn't try to get there characters killed so they could re-roll a new one.
Players wouldn't carry all there eggs in one basket.
It would be an easy way to remove excess wealth from players.
Knowing players they will find some way to abuse this system.
How would inhibit abuse if you ran such a system?
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I would find such a game far too MMOey for my tastes, as would many here no doubt. But I suppose to some thats a perk.
My real issues with it are-
Firstly as a player it would rob versimilitude from the game unless it is very well reasoned and fluffed out.
Secondly, it would rob the element of risk somewhat from the game, as your favourite character is never really in any danger except for losing gear. It would rob me of attachment to that character...
Also, they respawn small in said town and have to eat a red mushroom to be big again.
I´d name my character Xandir.
I know, it can be frustrating if the character dies but nonetheless, just respawning reminds me of MMORPGs. The campaign world might have unrealistic stuff like magic and all but respawning just feels like playing a computer action game.
I would find such a game far too MMOey for my tastes, as would many here no doubt. But I suppose to some thats a perk.
My real issues with it are-
Firstly as a player it would rob versimilitude from the game unless it is very well reasoned and fluffed out.
I completely understand this argument. It would need an in game explanation.
My intent(mind you this is just an idea off the top of my head) isn't to make the game more MMOey but to (possibly)increase enjoyment by making managing resources matter more... I suppose just like a MMO(oh brother.)
Secondly, it would rob the element of risk somewhat from the game, as your favourite character is never really in any danger except for losing gear. It would rob me of attachment to that character...
Pathfinder doesn't have official rules on what to do when a player dies(I don't think.) Usually I just let them re-roll another character of the same level because players hate loosing EXP. Of everything, they feel like, thats the thing they've earned the most. I sympathize.
Sometimes I get players who've had buyers remorse about taking a certain level or feet and instead of trying to role-play a solution to the problem(which I am willing to entertain) they will commonly just let there character die.
This creates another problem because I have to give the new player some equipment. The rest of the party isn't going to give some stranger there old companions belongings but they have on qualms about selling it off to buy them better equipment.
Players also tend to "put all there eggs in one basket:" Carrying tones of quasi useful equipment. Such is the way of the adventurer but probably(if you really think about it) far less realistic. Spreading out your wealth can allow your character more stability which is more realistic. In real life people care about what they leave behind and where it's located.
I think the MMO feel can be fluffed away. A deity is powerful enough to rescue you from deaths door, but might take away your items as tribute. Or he may take them away for the heck of it and hide them somewhere.
Instead of "respawning in town with no items" you are "teleported to town, receive a breath of life, but your items are claimed by your benefactor as tribute".
When a player dies they can be brought back with an expensive ritual with two negative levels which can be removed at the rate of one per week with a restoration spell. Stronger resurrection spells have fewer penalties. No permanent level loss like back in the day.
I think the MMO feel can be fluffed away. A deity is powerful enough to rescue you from deaths door, but might take away your items as tribute. Or he may take them away for the heck of it and hide them somewhere.
Instead of "respawning in town with no items" you are "teleported to town, receive a breath of life, but your items are claimed by your benefactor as tribute".
Ya, something along those lines.
Angles: "we thank your for your blood sacrifice and offerings. We reward you with life! You will be please to know that your donation will help spread the word of Douchbagerton"
You: "Darn it, I hate that church!"
You would also completely cripple characters who end up in town with no gear. I'd rather re-roll than be made to go through mid-high level Pathfinder with mundane gear, especially as a martial character.
This is why you should allow the PC's to regain some/all of their gear.
As a player, I'd love it. Before I started GMing, I think the total amount of Gold Pieces I had post character creation was about 5 from looting corpses. Our GM is very cash-tight in games, and even tighter on magic items. I could see us reaching 20th level with only maybe 100 Gold in total (and as the current GM, I'm pretty much just as tight). :P Heck, just getting mundane items might be kinda difficult... short of either bullying or con'ing someone out of theirs (or plain stealing)
I am suddenly reminded of Planecape: Torment!
"You wake up on a slab and have no idea how you go there..."
:D
Done once, this could be a cool 'trick' to change the game. Done more than that, esepcially as a 'standard' would lead me to play DDO instead. If we are going to just respawn, I will let the computer do all the math and work ;)
GNOME
You would also completely cripple characters who end up in town with no gear. I'd rather re-roll than be made to go through mid-high level Pathfinder with mundane gear, especially as a martial character.
Thats why I said:
Players also tend to "put all there eggs in one basket:" Carrying tons of quasi useful equipment.Such is the way of the adventurer but probably(if you really think about it) far less realistic. Spreading out your wealth can allow your character more stability which is more realistic. In real life people care about what they leave behind and where it's located.
Players tend to unrealistically carry there lives with them.
Giving them mundane gear wouldn't hurt. Certainly they would have something(not going to leave them naked sitting on a bar stool) but a player who kept all of his possessions on him would say:
"I've lost everything!"
This is why you should allow the PC's to regain some/all of their gear.
I can see that, although I don't know how that would work.
Maybe if you pleaded with the god.
This is just a "what if." A crazy idea I had after reading a bit of Kingmaker(1of6) last night.
I've had many crazy ideas like this and I always run them by my players. I need a very good reasons to veto there votes.
If its a bad idea its a bad idea and I shouldn't have enough reasons.
Even if this is a thread about a bad idea I feel its important to explore it as a possibility.
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I think it will change the tone of the game, regardless of how you explain it - at least I'm sure it would with my players.
Being able to resurrect dead characters changes the tone - be it with the easy availability of high level npc-clerics or with the PCs own spells. Players start to think and speak differently od their characters dying.
Characters just coming back in the next town, even if it is, due to the loss of their gear, a harsher punishment for "death" will change this again.
And if the characters know, they will start building a stack of secondary items and might begin to chose their fights with less care - remember: to bring a characterback to life, there needs to be a survivor with the capability to cast high level cleric spells or at least to reach a mighty npc to do so. Once the characters come back to life by themself, this is no longer needed.
Keep that in mind if you make that choice.
My suggestion would be to rule that your PCs can't be killed outright by getting enough negative HP. You either have to Coup de Grace them or they have to be killed by specific effects like Disintergrate or Finger of Death. Keep the negative HP around incase of the effects I suggest above or for things like the Die Hard feat. Once the PC surpasses their Con with negative HP they go into a coma. This way you can drop a PC at low levels or even TPK a party and still keep running with the PCs waking up captured or something. If you think it's appropriate though, you can still kill a PC though.
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Feels like the game Descent to me, which may not be a bad thing, per se.
If you did do this, I'd probably allow the dead PC to keep some gear on respswn, perhaps their "basic loadout" a la Crackdown / Halo / Descent.
Thus, PC stays level appropriate for CR range, but may not have all the bells & whistles of his previous incarnation.
That being said, KM is a very wide (geographicly) game, and there's not really a "town" nearby for a large part if it.
An interesting idea at least, & probably bears some further brainstorming.
There's no concern for death so I'm going to intentionally dive into that dragon's mouth, open its epiglottis, and lodge myself (or an object) inside its trachea so that it chokes to death, suffocating on my corpse.
I'll be back later to collect my treasure. :)
There's no concern for death so I'm going to intentionally dive into that dragon's mouth, open its epiglottis, and lodge myself (or an object) inside its trachea so that it chokes to death, suffocating on my corpse.
I'll be back later to collect my treasure. :)
Well, if all your equipment is gone when you die, there would be a concern for death.
I don't think its likely that you could dive into a dragons mouth.
That is to say that If you have enough skill to dive down a dragons mouth with little to no equipment and open its epiglottis, and lodge yourself inside its trachea so that it chokes to death you and your fellow adventurers probably wouldn't have much trouble killing it normally.
Remember every time you loose that ring of sustenance you have to eat for a week before it reactivates.
Players already do stuff like this but usually when they want to re roll there character.
There is no concern for death when you can just make another character.
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I got really excited when I read the thread title because I thought this would be a campaign plot hook. When I read that you were tinkering with a Pathfinder Quake style ‘Respawn Point’ I visibly shuddered. What do they do next, run to Respawn point for holy avenger? Yuck.
This is just a bad, bad, bad idea. As others have said, it’s like you’re substituting playing a video game. The Gods would not do this to an adventuring party unless the entire party had been involved in an expensive ritual cast PRIOR to the TPK event. They would not wake up at the water fountain of the middle of town, Grand Theft Auto style, they’d wake up in magic sarcophagi in the Grand Cathedral of their god. And they’d know it was coming. And their equipment would be left lying where the TPK event occurred (assumedly to be added to the horde of the Dragon they were attempting to kill).
From a games point of view, this practice would encourage kamikaze scouting runs where the rogue or ranger would be made invisible, receive buffs to stealth and would be sent running through an entire dungeon to give the party spellcasters the best idea of what spells to prep when they take on the dungeon ‘for serious’. Ordinarily, rangers and rogues don’t do this because the chance of survival is nil.
My advice is, if you’re thinking serious about this, get away from pen and paper rpgs and turn on your Xbox. Get it all out of your system.
I can see that, although I don't know how that would work.
One word - Minecraft. The corpse is out there, rotting away, with all the stuff on it, or what's left when the formerly dead guy gets back to it.
I actually like this idea. You'd almost have to build the whole game around it - nix (or turn up the difficulty for) any sort of raise spells, and have the PCs be fairly unique in this regard - they're the ones who touched the unhallowed artifact or what have you. It's an excellent explanation as to why these people would become adventurers.
With it, though, I think that you'd also need to get rid of the Death's Door mechanics as well. You're trading off the nature of the penalty for getting to 0 hp.
This is just a bad, bad, bad idea.
The point of the thread is to find out if its actually a bad idea and, for the fun of it, find out how bad it actually is.
As others have said, it’s like you’re substituting playing a video game.
Emulating a video game isn't my intend at all. I don't play many video games(I've recently played Monkey island, Death Spank and Portal.)
"Thats like a video game" isn't in itself a good argument. Video games are after all written by people who are trying to maximize fun.
If the only difference between Pen and paper and a video game was what happen when you died then we probably wouldn't play Pen and paper. Fortunately/unfortunately video games can't emulate the Pen and Paper experience.
And their equipment would be left lying where the TPK event occurred (assumedly to be added to the horde of the Dragon they were attempting to kill).
I wasn't assuming a TPK. If a players dies I was assuming that they're equipment vanished.
From a games point of view, this practice would encourage kamikaze scouting runs where the rogue or ranger would be made invisible, receive buffs to stealth and would be sent running through an entire dungeon to give the party spellcasters the best idea of what spells to prep when they take on the dungeon ‘for serious’. Ordinarily, rangers and rogues don’t do this because the chance of survival is nil.
On my first reading of this I agreed but then I thought about it critically.
What dungeon is set up so that a rogue or ranger could scout the entire thing successfully?
What party members would WAIT for a rogue or ranger to scout out the entire dungeon? In fact you would have to send those players home. That doesn't sound like fun.
Wouldn't it be easier to cast a summon monster to do it?
Wouldn't it be easier to use knowledge checks?
Wouldn't it be easier to use divination?
Wouldn't it be easier to not die?
My advice is, if you’re thinking serious about this, get away from pen and paper rpgs and turn on your Xbox. Get it all out of your system.
Well, I'm not thinking seriously about it but I am taking the idea seriously.
I don't own an Xbox. I spend all of my money on Pathfinder and magic cards.
What if, instead of dieing, players ended up back in town without there possessions?
I realized that it wouldn't be realistic.
What are the possible downfalls?
I see quite a few benefits although maybe I'm just super tired.
Players would work together more because no one want to pay for another party members stuff.
Players wouldn't try to get there characters killed so they could re-roll a new one.
Players wouldn't carry all there eggs in one basket.
It would be an easy way to remove excess wealth from players.Knowing players they will find some way to abuse this system.
How would inhibit abuse if you ran such a system?
To me, it sounds like you need to..
Talk to your players. If they are killing themselves off to reroll it means they do not think they have an open line of communication with you. You need to assure them that they can come to you with their issues and that they will be heard. This doesn't mean you have to let them re-roll but it does mean they need to feel they can talk to you about it. Maybe they can swap out a feat or an archtype rather than feeling the need to have themselves murdered?
Eggs? in a basket?.. You do play in an odd campaign. I don't think I've ever had a character specifically tote around an egg. Now- I do know what the saying typically means but I really can't figure out how it would apply to D&D. Are your players relying on one player to do all the work? One ability? one spell? one tactic?
Removing excess wealth is actually far easier. At the end of the next adventure- or before the next game starts- pull the player who has the item(s) that are "too much" aside and talk to them about powering the items down. Be polite- but do remember you aren't really asking. You have the right- and actually the *duty* to keep the players in line even if that means taking away something you gave them or allowed them to have. DM's make mistakes. Don't compound the mistake by being afraid to talk to them about the offending item(s) and have them neutered. (the items, not the PC's.. or players)
I would inhibit abuse by never instituting such a system in the first place. I *might* as a player allow it to happen once in the course of several campaigns but "you are in the town naked" regardless of how the DM had it happen would get old in the first 10 seconds, much less having it happen multiple times.
Talk to the players. Assure them that they can talk to you and that you are all adults and can work out issues in the game. Avoid taking mechanical problems "in game" to solve them. Solve them out of character, out of game, and you'll find the solutions work far, far better.
-S
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Also, it'd be cool if the players could receive treasure by making successful jump checks to hit floating golden bricks with their heads. When this occurs, gold pieces can fly out. Just seems like a more fun way to do treasure, you know? Chests are so-so. Headbutting bricks in midair is fun.
On the dungeon scout questions...
1 - Once you can stealthily open doors, the world is your oyster. The point is, with the wake-up naked next to the glowing hero respawn point in your campaign, you don't need to worry about the 'being successful' part of the game.
2 - Your point makes it sound more possible that the ENTIRE PARTY will embark on the doomed-to-fail save-and-reload dungeon scout.
3 - Rounds per level and line of sight.
4 - Only if you can see what you need to make the skill check on.
5 - Expensive, mysterious and prone to DM tricks.
6 - It's far easier to not die if you know exactly what you'll be dealing with and the exact circumstances in which you deal with them.
We haven't even gotten stuck into the idea that the party will put all their best equipment in storage and embark on their scouting runs wearing ninja loincloths.
Why are you assuming their equipment vanishes? Where does it go? Why does this equipment simply disappear? What possible realistic reason is there for any of these changes? You put out these 'what if' questions with no explanation of WHY and HOW - which are critical questions for verisimilitude. Which is, kinda, you know, what this game is meant to be about.
Are you worried about player death? *Why* are you considering this bizarre method of character survival?
Talk to your players. If they are killing themselves off to reroll it means they do not think they have an open line of communication with you. You need to assure them that they can come to you with their issues and that they will be heard. This doesn't mean you have to let them re-roll but it does mean they need to feel they can talk to you about it. Maybe they can swap out a feat or an archtype rather than feeling the need to have themselves murdered?
This isn't a "I'm having a problem" type thread. I do have problems but I typically don't post them on forums.
This is more of a "what if" kind of thread. At least I would like it to be.
I have very good report with my players. Communication isn't a problem and isn't why I posted this thread.
If this type of thing doesn't interest you I understand. I am interested in why it wouldn't work.
I am not "broke" or "in need of help" just for suggesting it. If you feel that I am I would prefer that you didn't post.
“Don’t Put Your Eggs In One Basket” in a common English idiom that means:don't risk everything all at once
If players loose there immediate possessions because they die they are more likely to spread there possessions out instead of keeping all there possessions on them (putting all there eggs in one basket.)
Idioms are fun and being able to spot them is important so I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
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What if, instead of dieing, players ended up back in town without there possessions?
I realized that it wouldn't be realistic.
What are the possible downfalls?
God is making a Vidoe game out of the Universe?
Surango the Halfling kicked dirt on the naked warriors and laughed as he walked off to tell others.
"What a bunch of loosers..."
I know what the phrase meant just had no idea how you meant it.
I've never, in 20 years of gaming, had a DM think we should leave perfectly good gear any place than on us- where it can do us the most good. The WBL is setup such that if you are leaving your items somewhere else then you are very likely to have a problem facing appropriately CR'd critters. Some DM's require (because of their playstyle) for wizards to have back up spellbooks and weapon flingers to keep a couple of spares but even then the spares/backups aren't.. in some other place. They are more or less readily accessible otherwise they lose the use for which you had them. Leaving your spare sword in town does no good when a pudding eats the one you normally use. Where exactly would you have them put their gear, than on their person? Nowhere else makes any sense.
As for the other- I misunderstood your post then :) Generally though I'd line this idea up alongside "rocks fall, you die". It just sucks. It might work for 1 campaign, 1 time but after that its old hat for a life time. Too much of a character's overall ability to deal with encounters of their APL is bound up in their gear. Total removal of their gear with no readily accessible way to regain it just ruins the system and, to me, the game. Its just my opinion of course- maybe others think it would be a blast. Running around as a sword/shield fighter with a club and hoping you found a shield sometime though isn't fun to me. Nor is a wizard with his spellbook taken/gone/etc. or whatever.
I have been in exactly one campaign in 20 years where we literally lost every square inch of our loot. The paladin and cleric fashioned crude holy symbols out of some spare wood (and alot of work) and the sorc was alright but the barbarian? the sword wielding bard? The wizard? They were.. Well- what they were would be censored on the boards. We all made due for awhile and scounged around for "make do" stuff but really the DM had to drop the APL of things until we finished that plot hook and got our gear back. (all of our gear- actually, not just "roughly equivalent stuff").
It can be interesting to challenge the players in new ways but I think a DM should be careful in how the players react. "You are naked and have no gear and no way to get it back" is roughly akin to "hand me your character sheet, I'm controlling your character for awhile". Fun? For you, maybe. For the player?.. Not so much.**
-S
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OK You are talking about PCs establishing a cashe of backup equipment incase they loose their existing gear. I used to do it as a wizard. When I got sufficient funds in an adventure I payed the local villagers to build a Stone storehouse where I put surplus wealth that i couldnt carry (a dozen barrels of Wine from the slavers base along with an collection of Weapons and armor)... Sometimes it got lifted and sometimes it didnt. It was in the long term advantageous.
Why are you assuming their equipment vanishes? Where does it go? Why does this equipment simply disappear? What possible realistic reason is there for any of these changes?
I'm not assuming I'm saying. If you die your appear in town without your equipment. Your equipment is gone.
I'm sorry that wasn't clear I was a little tired when I wrote my first post.
You put out these 'what if' questions with no explanation of WHY and HOW - which are critical questions for verisimilitude. Which is, kinda, you know, what this game is meant to be about.
I consider this mostly a game mechanics question. The HOW and WHY are important but they're role playing questions. They can be dealt with After the idea has been fully fleshed out.
Are you worried about player death? *Why* are you considering this bizarre method of character survival?
It isn't about me.
Knowing players they will find some way to abuse this system.
How would inhibit abuse if you ran such a system?
I believe this would be a setting-altering feature, to say the least.
I mean, the whole concept of life and death would be turned upside down. It would have HUGE consequences on morality, religion and life in general. Even if this feature exist only for PCs, that would make them god-like creatures - immortals so to speak - and there's no way that wouldn't have a humongous impact on social classes, ruling caste etc.
If the goal is to inhibit abuse, then I think this system would have the reverse effect: it would encourage abuse of one kind or another. Take morality only, how bad would it be to "kill" someone that can come back a few minutes after? How evil(or not) do you have to be to actively and deliberately seek a permanent death to a re-spawning character?
I'm not a fan of re-spawning at all, but I'm sure that with the right fluff it could be made into a very interesting setting. But as as cut-and-paste system into your typical fantasy setting, it wouldn't work well IMO.
If recurrent death really becomes an issue in a meat-grinding adventure, I'd rather suggest as "re-live the same fight until you get it right" à la Groundhog Day type of system.
'findel
I know what the phrase meant just had no idea how you meant it.
I didn't mean to be vague, I was rather tired when I first posted.
Where exactly would you have them put their gear, than on their person?
I agree that having spare gear is important. It isn't important that all your possessions be on you. This isn't a big thing for me.
I have been in exactly one campaign in 20 years where we literally lost every square inch of our loot. The paladin and cleric fashioned crude holy symbols out of some spare wood (and alot of work) and the sorc was alright but the barbarian? the sword wielding bard? The wizard? They were.. Well- what they were would be censored on the boards. We all made due for awhile and scounged around for "make do" stuff but really the DM had to drop the APL of things until we finished that plot...
The main idea is that they players would loose there equipment not there lives.
It would be silly if they were naked. Giving them clothes and mundane equipment is a good idea. Hopefully When the other player get to town they will chip in and buy there teammate some new stuff. Although this does hurt the players that didn't die.
Hopefully, they players will not die all at once and if they do hopefully they will have some more equipment in town.
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...which are critical questions for verisimilitude. Which is, kinda, you know, what this game is meant to be about.
Except when it's about having fun with a few friends.
As far as the feasibility of this scenario, you'd have to do a LOT of changes to the general WBL system / CR system to get around the "no pretty toys" issue.
One trick (which I am considering more and more strongly) is to remove magic items from the game entirely, and apply those +X's and +Y's to the character themselves.
For example: At 2nd level, you receive a +1 to hit with either Ranged or Melee weapons - player's choice. (Reflects the assumption that anyone who is actually trying to fight with weapons will have a masterwork XYZ by that point.)
At 3rd level, you receive a +1 to damage with Ranged or Melee weapons (whichever you picked at 2nd level) or a +1 Resistance bonus to Saves.
Etc...
This way is a LOT of work to tweak the numbers so as to allow any and all classes to stay viable throughout the leveling process, but divorces Character from Wealth quite thoroughly.
This way, when your Fighter dies in the dungeon and respawns "back in town" or "outside the entrance" or wherever you decide, he grabs any old sword/stick/etc, straps on some hand-me-down armor, and goes about his business.
The feel for this style of campaign would likely be much more loose and fast, as compared to most games I've played in, but I can see the appeal in it. If you were running an "Arena Deathmatch" situation, this would be absolutely perfect, since the point of the game is not to "participate in a shared story, with dice" but "rack up as many kills as possible."
It's quite obviously not everyone's cup of tea, but in the right company, it'd be a lot of fun.
Some of the frustrations you expressed seem to me to come from a dungeon crawl perspective. If the characters have no base of operations, where are they supposed to leave stuff behind? If the only investment the characters make is to the next +X Hit Points, why should they care if their character dies?
If they are having buyer's remorse over a Feat, why not just let them change the Feat?
In my humble opinion, the characters need to form relationships with the NPCs of the world. When failure means someone they care about suffers, they are less likely to just shrug and roll up a new character.
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To be fair, "respawn" campaign could be a dandy fit for a campaign set in hell.
Probably combine it with a lessening of power or station. Players are the damned, or fiends, and they gain power/xp by claiming the souls of others, absorbing them into themselves, by force or trickery. Death means that some of these souls are able to tear free as you reform. Lose too many and you start over from scratch as just another of the lowly damned.
...just woke up.
I could see it as a one time campaign defining event, but any more than that, and it is likely going to feel very metagamey no matter how you fluff it. That combined with the fact that quest to regain gear might be fun once, but probably not multiple times, and it screams one time use only to me.
It's an interesting premise, and I agree with everyone that says you have to build a setting to justify it. My immediate thought was something along the lines of...
The first time a PC dies, he (or she) wakes up in a pool of foul, glowing liquid. After clambering out, coughing and spluttering up whatever eldritch goo he was submerged in, he stumbles out into a cold, lightless tower. He remembers only that he died, and not exactly how. His memories up to that point are intact, but the closer he comes to remembering how he died, where he died, or what killed him, the fuzzier memories get. Scrawled on the walls are messages in his own hand-writing; warnings, cryptic advice, and ravings from previous lives. When the PC finally exits the tower, naked and alone, he finds himself in vaguely familiar territory. The tower he just left is gone. He now has to find his way back to his allies by retracing his steps.
In game terms, he has his skills intact, but not his recent memories. It would make for some great roleplay moments, especially if you leave the tower they ressurrect in deliberately vague. Hell, I'd be tempted to have them all wake up at level 1 inside the tower, knowing they died recently, but not knowing the details. It'd make for an awesome story, a group of almost immortal PCs trying to figure out why they can't die. If a player gets bored of a character, it's easy enough to have a new PC wake up in the tower. As for what happens to the old PC, well, that's up the the GMs imagination and the story that grows up around the tower and the PCs investigation of it.
As for equipment, well that'd hinge on the corpse run (to mooch an MMO term). If there was a TPK, your gear is now outfitting some very shiny dungeon dwellers. Good luck recovering your +2 full plate from the orc that's wearing it and wielding your +1 frost burst great sword. Seriously though, I'd go back for it. It's my stuff. Just need to be clever. PCs may start investing in "backups", leaving mundane or lesser magical equipment in safe houses so they can recover their gear. If PCs survived the encounter, well, maybe they'll play nice and hang onto your gear. They won't have any idea how long it will take you to return though. I'd probably have the tower drop you off at a random location like a teleport misfire, so your walk back would always vary. Still, that violates the cardinal rule of "Don't split the party!" so you'd have to find creative ways to keep this interesting without breaking the flow of the game.
I'm almost tempted to run this game now... There's a lot of neat stuff that could come out of this, but unless you can keep deepening the mystery, it's going to eventually become like a video game, where the consequences become more an inconvenience. To be fair though, a lot of games turn out that way, especially with veteran players establishing Raise Dead funds to prepare for the inevitable PC deaths. It's all in how deeply the players want to roleplay death and consequences in world where throwing a sack of gold into your local church can return life to your dear departed dead puppy.
Two words for you: resurrection ships
Bam!
Another way to look at this is a benign(or not) wizard who creates clones of the PC(perhaps towards his own mysterious ends). The player's equipment does not disappear, it just stays on their body.
Some of the frustrations you expressed seem to me to come from a dungeon crawl perspective. If the characters have no base of operations, where are they supposed to leave stuff behind? If the only investment the characters make is to the next +X Hit Points, why should they care if their character dies?
I am actually not having any frustration. Its just an idea.
If they are having buyer's remorse over a Feat, why not just let them change the Feat?
This is actually what I do it now. Me and my player talk and I make a decision. This is not an attempt to fix this interaction.
I talked it over with my players and it seems like its just a bad idea. They kept saying: "a war of attrition."
Unfortunately this leads me to the conclusion that my players care more about there equipment then there characters. This was confirmed by one of my players: "yep." I feel to a certain extent that I've failed as a GM but I know I haven't because they are begging me not to leave for Chicago.
I guess if it's not broke don't fix it.
I am actually not having any frustration.
Unfortunately this leads me to the conclusion that my players care more about there equipment then there characters.
This sounds like frustration to me. I guess I am reading more into it.
I guess if it's not broke don't fix it.
True, but is it broken for you? The GM has just as much right to fun as the players. As I said, maybe I am reading to much into some of your posts. If it is not bothering you or your players, then yeah, no point fixing it.
This is not meant to be sarcastic- it is an honest question for the OP.
Do you really expect- to the point of pondering this idea- that your characters will shave off part of their WBL and store it in some town for the possibility that they will be res'd naked and need to regear? No offense meant here- but that sounds like diablo II tactics. Fill the "bank" with last level's gear in case you die and need it to do a corpse recovery.
To give an honest reply to your question: how would players react, what game consequences, etc.
The consequence for You as DM is that you would either need to tone down mosnsters or ramp up loot. The reasoning is because.. even if your PC's decide to start storing part of their wealth in town-they'll still be behind the WBL charts. The gear to even remain relevant is going to require them to store back 20-50% of WBL just so they can be strong enough to do be relevant in such corpse recovery activity. Being 12th level, for example, and walking in with mundane sword and armor is just going to result in another quick trip to the "spawn point".
Players would probably react by treating the game like a video game. No gear would matter and death would become trivial. They would literally have no excuse not to charge on in and hope they lived. If not- who cares? They appear back in town with "mundane gear" and go for it again.
Better yet- the Red Shirt could strip naked (to his red shirt and breeches) charge into the lair, see who's there, and die. he runs back to the group, tells them what the BBEG's lair looks like, straps his gear back on, and is ready to go. A cursed sword would be particularly useful for this- as your method would either break the curse or keep him with a handy sword regardless of his death. Either way- he wins.
Spontaneous casters and divine casters would begin the rule the world while dungeons all over would slowly start to accumulate spellbooks until the wizards who spawned them wised up and became some other class that didn't have such a heavy gear requirement. (spell books are both expensive and time intensive. Your system would effectively eliminate them).
The biggest issue to me though is the complete and utter lack of verisimilitude. I used video game words throughout the post because it reminds me directly of Diablo II. If you've never played the game- you have a "bank" in town you keep your gold and items in so that when and if you die (and you will die) you reappear int own and can strap on some old gear, to go back into the dungeon in hopes you can "reclaim your corpse" to get your original gear. The problem is that its a video game and all games have some way to reclaim your gear. D&D is supposed to more closely resemble "life".. such that, when you die you are dead unless someone brings you back. No "reset button".
If you really want your players to toss gold back for "oops I died" or whateever because it seems more realistic to you than tell them so and then provide them enough extra gear to keep some back. I do have to say though that in any group i've ever been with, we never once put perfectly good gear anywhere but on our person or sold to a shop or person. We had no "bank" or storage area that kept our gear. This was because 1) we needed all our stuff to survive and 2) we were always on the move so there was no *place* to go back to. Often we were going from A to B to C to D to E and.. well, if we ever came back to A after leaving it then it was coincidence. And usually- so far removed from the original trip that any "loot" left there would have been either reclaimed by the crown or so worthless to our current level as to be irrelevant. This is of course campaign specific. If your group has/uses a fort or town or city as a main base and always returns to it, then I could see where that idea would be more valid.
-S
You seem to think this is very serious. I don't plan on doing this. This is a bad Idea. I realize that.
However there are a few arguments that are just not good arguments.
This is not meant to be sarcastic- it is an honest question for the OP.
Do you really expect- to the point of pondering this idea- that your characters will shave off part of their WBL and store it in some town for the possibility that they will be res'd naked and need to regear?
I'm not entirely sure was WBL is. I think it possessions?
I think its virtually always a good Idea to have backup resources.
It's smart, its believable, its realistic, its logical and it has president.
Keeping all of your resources on you isn't smart, it isn't believable, it isn't realistic, it isn't logical and it doesn't have President at least not in real life.
Today, I finished packing my room(I'm heading to Chicago) I own lots of junk. It would be foolish to carry all my life on my back. I'm not an adventurer I don't have a bag of holding.
I don't direct deposit my checks from work. It is foolish of me to carry all of my money around on me. I'm not an adventurer I can't defend myself.
An adventurer might be unique in that carrying there lifes on there backs isn't a bad Idea but that doesn't mean having backup resources IS a bad Idea.
No offense meant here- but that sounds like diablo II tactics. Fill the "bank" with last level's gear in case you die and need it to do a corpse recovery.
Well saying the idea is like a video game isn't invalidating the idea. I tryed to make this clear already:
if the only difference between Pen and paper and a video game was what happen when you died then we probably wouldn't play Pen and paper. Fortunately/unfortunately video games can't emulate the Pen and Paper experience.
The consequence for You as DM is that you would either need to tone down mosnsters or ramp up loot.
Not sure if either of these are bad consequences.
Players would probably react by treating the game like a video game. No gear would matter and death would become trivial. They would literally have no excuse not to charge on in and hope they lived. If not- who cares? They appear back in town with "mundane gear" and go for it again.
My players didn't like the idea one bit. I have a good report with my players. It's a bad Idea. I do feel that they could get over there initial rebelling because It would become tedious to have there war of attrition.
He runs back to the group, tells them what the BBEG's lair looks like, straps his gear back on, and is ready to go.
Whats the difference between a red dragon and an red dragon that knows you are coming? A GM can only imagine.
WBL=wealth by level (see page 399, core rulebook).
WBL=wealth by level (see page 399, core rulebook).
Thanks!
Keeping all of your resources on you isn't smart, it isn't believable, it isn't realistic, it isn't logical and it doesn't have President at least not in real life.
Why do homeless people prize shopping carts?
I think your perspective is strongly skewed by middle class, 21st century thinking. However, if the issue you have is your characters carrying all their gear with them all the time, then you need to address the 'why' of that. Your proposal here, I do not think, actually addresses that issue. For one thing, it only addresses the issue when they die, which, hopefully, is not too often.
Where do you want the characters to put their equipment? Why do you think they do not put their equipment there? How can you make those choices more appealing?
Something else that occurs to me is that this is not the root of the issue either. Could it be the over-reliance on equipment that is really the issue? You certainly would not be alone in that. Back in the old days, it was sometimes referred to as the Christmas tree effect.
In DDO you have to find someone and set up for it.
Now if you are playing Matrix style, you are in a computer game and not everyone knows, then yes, you teleport home. In Minecraft your gear stays behind.
Another option is tithing. You give a selected church 5%-10% of everything you get. You can bank tithe by donating stuff you cannot use. Evil items to be destroyed, ect. In any case, only tithers get to keep their stuff, usually. Naughty characters lose their poison collection somehow. :)
IIRC with True Resurrection all you need to bring someone back from the dead is to know who they are (no bits of the body required), and a massive amount of diamonds. If the PCs are Heros of Destiny! who are needed to save reality, I can see high priest of a major temple rezing them whenever they kick off. They will show up naked back at the temple. This is all within the rules. Obviously the temple is eating the cost of the components. They can either borrow some basic gear from the temple for their corpse run, or use something they left back in town for such an occasion.
If you want to balance the cost of the diamonds, you could either require tithes, or have the characters perform missions for the church. A more meta-game answer would to reduce treasure from the monsters, or have cash/gear missing from the corpses when they got back.
The idea of a floating "bind point" like the town square of the last town you visited just strain suspension of disbelief. But if the campaign is set where you are the mortal agents of a divine force, and will not be allowed to die until your task is complete, it works.
Not something you can just slap into a game, but if you build the campaign around it, it can flow smoothly.
As is my habit, I made a Cleaves card for it.
68. Save point
This marble slab stands on 4 oak legs at the corners. It is 4 wide, 7 long, and 1 foot thick. The legs are 1 foot long each. The marble is hard as normal bedrock and a minor artifact.
Hook: Once claimed by a character, their name appears on the side in black metal inlay. From that point on, whenever they die they appear buck naked on top of the table as if a true resurrection was cast on them. Any items that have to follow them, destined items, appear under the table. Destined items include cursed items, adventure path critical things, class items such as spell books, thieves tools, and holy symbols, and the free clothing they started play with.
PEACH: Please Evaluate and Comment Helpfully: If you can tell me what this thing would weigh, so characters can move it to a safer area, please do.
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What if, instead of dieing, players ended up back in town without there possessions?
I realized that it wouldn't be realistic.
What are the possible downfalls?
I see quite a few benefits although maybe I'm just super tired.
Mechanically, the game has had this as an option for years, through the use of astral projection. If a campaign setting had adventurers use a version of astral projection to lie down in a rented room in town and send their astral selves off adventuring, only suffering a loss of whatever gear their astral selves equipped themselves with before heading out, in the event of 'death,' that would be a fairly uncontroversial use of the same mechanic. (Maybe they have to cast a spell that makes the inn room count as 'astral space' so that they can project their astral dupes into the 'real world' outside of the inn room, or something, and this version would actually be weaker than the traditional astral projection, which creates duplicate equipment as well!)
[There are other ways this could work within the extant rules, such as some sort of ready access to Clone spells, but I'm not in the mood to write them all out. Suffice to say that the game already has this, it's just that nobody really uses it...]
For downfalls, there's the flavor. Regardless of this being part of D&D for decades (and outsiders doing it all the time), I don't know anyone that actually used it, and it's pretty 'cheap' feeling.
If it's anything like EverQuest 1, people absolutely will go back to try and get their stuff, and, generally, anything that could have wiped the party when they had their stuff, is now going to have an even easier time of killing them (especially if the encounter is smart enough / capable of using the adventurer's gear against them!), turning it into what we called, in EQ, a 'death-loop.' (One bad Plane of Fear break took twenty-three hours before we managed to finally get in there and retrieve our stuff, which was important, because after 24 hours, all gear left beind on 'corpses' vanished and was irretrievable. You can bet we kept going back, and some of the druids were up to *dozens* of deaths. A D&D mechanic that used the same 'die and lose your stuff' mechanic would, IMO, just encourage 'naked corpse runs' to go get that stuff back.)
Upsides? It's an interesting Transhumanist sort of theme, coming back from 'death' in a new body, or a different body, or a clone or whatever. Explorations of what death really means, and what 'self' really means, are common in these sorts of games, which are usually more science-fiction-based, but are just as valid in a game where, for two or three decades now, outsiders have made fake bodies on the material plane and when they 'died' just ended up 'going home' to their real bodies.
I think the 'naked corpse runs' is easy enough to discourage. Make the length of time before 'returning' variable and uncontrollable by the players. Sometimes it is days. Could be months. Then, just make sure something stumbles across the corpse's body and makes off with the loot.
The players might try it the first time, but when they realize their dead body and all there stuff is gone, I think they will be disinclined to go looking again.