So I recently had my first PC death, being flanked and luck of the dice managed to do him in. Since the other PCs were so close to getting to leveling to level 4, I allowed him to reroll nearing 4 but minus 1,000XP. Basically the same character was rolled, same stats, same class, same bloodline, same alignment and the same personality. Only HP, which had to be rolled, was different.
Is there something against doing this? I don't want to start a trend where all players treat their PCs are merely disposable lemmings...
How would you deal with this and answer the question of "Why not?"
I do hero points some games and most of the time PC's save them in case they die. Otherwise at level 4 you are pretty much out of luck. Maybe their employer is willing to garnish pay for the next mission in exchange for getting the PC brought back.
Hmm... I have seldom GM'd, but often faced death as a player. I feel playing without the very real possibility of death greatly lessens the excitement of roleplaying.
when I die, if the possibility exist within reason I welcome ressurrection.
Every time I die, my character beyond help it was my own fault.
Every time I sense the GM tilted chance in my favor to see me live I feel cheated.
But then, when I best death against all odds the game truly pwns!
I tend to encourage more creativity. If you die, you roll up a new character, not your old one with slight changes. Of course my players go for creativity too, so I rarely have to enforce anything about it.
I think the xp penalty should be incentive for them to not die. If it's not, perhaps make them start a full level behind or something. I allow the players to start their new characters at the same level with no penalties most of the time, since they do try hard to avoid death, and always roll up something completely new if they have to.
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The death policy depends on the route the players go.
If they choose to get them revived, then that character is the same level and exp value despite their failure (it's no fun to fall behind), and their punishment is that the revive/heal cost comes out of their share.
If the character stays dead, the player rolls up a new character. The loot is either buried with the character (respect for the dead and all that), or donated to someone or some charity in their name. The party might take some of the one-use or limited use items (like potions or wands), but not stuff like weapons or armor.
If that player tried to roll up a character that was exactly identical save for their name and a new beauty mark that would get shut down very quickly. Not just by the DM, but by the other players as well who would find it boring (and directly unfun, as it cheapens the now-dead character). Even mentioning it as a joke is sure to get some groans out of people.
Besides, who wants to re-play the guy who died horribly and couldn't be arsed to be revived?
Generally I'd ask him to roll up something different or deal with the cost/burden of getting a resurrection. If they have no money but he doesn't want to roll up a new character try to make it happen even if it had to be some kind of debt to a randomly placed high level cleric that would require the party to do some kind of free job for him but I wouldn't be okay with them rerolling the same character and would veto the idea.
This +1
I think it is too cheesy to just re-roll the same character.
If they don't want something new, then he owes powerful being X a task Y (unpleasant, difficult, and/or repugnant) to be performed at some unspecified time (probably inconvenient).
I don't want to start a trend where all players treat their PCs are merely disposable lemmings...
Right there you answered the question, "why not?". If a player sees that he/she can basically continue the campaign with "relatively" the same character with only an xp penalty, and they actually want to do that, (side-note here, I think that speaks to a decided lack of creativity on the player's part) they will.
Infinite Bard Hilarity starts about the two minute mark.
I have one rule when it comes to rolling up a new character for a running campaign: It cannot be the same class as the one that just died. (In addition, if a new player joins an already running campaign they are not allowed to roll a character that is the same as any class currently in the campaign.) That one rule prevents anything like this from ever happening.
If a player is ineffective in a campaign for reasons that are not their fault, we usually allow them to reroll. If characters die, a different kind of character usually emerges
In retrospect, I was pretty forgiving of the player (the character nearly had a single digit of max health) but with a second thought, it was bad 'game etiquette' for the player to roll the same race/class/bloodline/alignment. His reasoning was that he really wanted to get the cool sorcerer powers at level 4.
It's been something that's been brought up in another RPG system before...then the players brought up that they couldn't understand why they wouldn't be allowed to. I've been really trying to find a good argument. I may just use the lemming analogy.
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In retrospect, I was pretty forgiving of the player (the character nearly had a single digit of max health) but with a second thought, it was bad 'game etiquette' for the player to roll the same race/class/bloodline/alignment. His reasoning was that he really wanted to get the cool sorcerer powers at level 4.
It's been something that's been brought up in another RPG system before...then the players brought up that they couldn't understand why they wouldn't be allowed to. I've been really trying to find a good argument. I may just use the lemming analogy.
If the player wants to play that character so badly that he is willing to remake it lemming-style, give them the opportunity to get the character revived instead and use it to get a hook into the characters.
Debt is a hell of a slavery mechanism.
For other (more elaborate) ideas:
1) Have the resurrection only sort-of work, requiring some method of constant up-keep or giving the player some distracting tick. (Make sure they can heal it, probably with Remove Curse.)
2) Have the resurrection work perfectly, but have the person who performs it leave a one-use "gotcha" in there (such as hold person) that they can call on as a swift action. Then make it so that the person who did the procedure "happen" to be working with the BBEG, or is the BBEG themselves.
3) Make it be reincarnate (if they're willing to live with it). Rolling that d% is always fun.
4) Use the revival as some other adventure hook. For example, have the character come back with the feeling that he was supposed to remember something, as though he was being told something important that he needed to know when he got back, then have him learn details of it whenever something reminds him of a piece of it. The finished memory can be some kind of "reveal" moment for the campaign.
There are lots of ways you can twist this into something that advances the narrative, rather than just saying "no". Saying "no" leaves a sour taste in peoples' mouths and should only be done when you have no reasonable alternative.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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My rule of thumb is: if it's good enough for the Dukes of Hazzard, it's good enough for my campaign. As long as the new character is a cousin of the dead character, I'm cool.
(as others have said, it sounds like the player really liked the character and still wants to play/continue with that concept. I'd look for some way of accomodating a resurrection of the existing character rather than have the player jump through these hoops. If that's not an option, I'd let the player make the long-lost cousin with nearly identical abilities.)
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I've allowed this in my campaign a time or two, but I generally reserve this sort of thing for players who bring in a new character and then die within moments of introducing said PC.
I have a guy in my group who had his new PC petrified within four minutes of me approving his character. The party had no way of fixing him, so I left the PC petrified and told the player he could bring in an exact copy of the last guy since he never really got to play what he wanted and nobody knew the guy long enough for him to matter. I just decided the first guy was some random victim of a trap.
I've got another player who is the type who just really likes to play evoker wizards. He once lost a PC, replaced the first letter of the dude's name with an "R" and then handed me his "new" character, the previous character's twin brother. He'd been playing the first character a little while, but I let it slide because it was funny.
I let another guy say his incoming character was a clone. He played the first character about 20 minutes before being killed by a mimic and the party wasn't really in a spot where new PCs could just show up out of nowhere so I made up some cockamamie story about a long-dead wizard's failed attempt to clone himself with a bunch of kidnapped adventurers. The player's two characters were two out of seven clones that had survived the process, but they were the only two that had survived a disease that caught up with the other five.
I don't encourage it but, basically, if it isn't going to hurt the campaign's story or if it isn't pushing the boundaries of your established level of wackiness, I don't think it's that big an issue. The players should be able to play what they want to play.
You might incur a simple restriction like they've got to change one aspect of the new PC (race, gender, ability score swap, a feat or skill points, etc.,) just to make things a little different but, when you think of all the monsters and NPCs out there with the exact same set of stat blocks, one or two PCs with the same set of stats doesn't sound all that crazy.
The party cleric/oracle (if there is one) could always put up the money for a scroll of Raise dead, but those two permanent negative levels hurt and its another 2k to get those removed, so its definitely with consequences, as it should be.
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How would you deal with this and answer the question of "Why not?"
We had our Rogue die at first level and the DM pretty much used one of the modules' NPC's make an early entry and bring him back to life. After that, we had the characters save cash and diamonds so they could get reincarnated or raised by local clerics/druids.
(Lately, we've had an NPC Bard traveling with us who's maxed for healing to keep us alive. Our rogue has just picked up Leadership to turn one of the NPC clerics into his cohort.)
If I were running the game, I'd have local clerics/druids offer to raise or reincarnate a character and if the PC's didn't have the cash, they'd work it off.
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The dead should stay dead.
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I die all the time... due to too colorful builds or just plain Opps. i always bring in a different character. I like to try alot of different builds so it fun to create new ones.
Sometimes you really want to see how a certain build will play out... specially if you really liked your PC. After talking to the player and if that is the case I would work a way to bring the original back.
The words "suspension of disbelief" rarely get used by modern day RPers but i find it hard to do if certain rules are not followed such as bring in a "twin" of the original character.
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I've been trying to come up with the best way to deal with this myself, whether it be character death, or players ending up not liking their character, or new books coming out mid campaign that makes people want to change their character.
My old policy was that new characters always came in one level lower than the lowest member of the party. But over time, I felt like I was just punishing players if they wanted to try something heroic and died in the attempt. I don't want to discourage players from taking risks, not to be confused with players doing something stupid.
I can also sympathize with the player that wants to play/remake the same character, especially if they die in the first 5 levels or so. Should a player really have to wait until the next campaign they play in to get to try out the character they wanted? A typical campaign of mine runs about 13~16 months.
So lately i've been having people come back at the same level/experience as the lowest person in the party, or the same if they were already that person.
They don't get to keep any magic items. I agree with the give to charity/buried with view on that.
I still want there to be some penalty for death so players worry about it, or so that they aren't remaking characters at the slightest disappointment.. I've been toying with the idea that you have to give up a magic item slot on your new character. Basically you don;t gain any benefits from wearing that type of item.
Death must be present in the game - otherwise you're taking away all pretence of danger. Players should put their characters in harm's way knowing that if they mess up, they die. It'll make succeeding really mean something. I also wouldn't allow the player to use essentially the same character with a -1000 xp penalty - I'd probably make them roll up another character a level lower or with a more significant xp penalty.
...My old policy was that new characters always came in one level lower than the lowest member of the party...
We used to do just like that. Problem was after a death, you are now more likely to die. We ended up with a 4 level spread between the highest level character and the lowest (unfortunately me), 15 to 11. With no way to catch up. Basically all I was doing was following the higher level guys around trying to stay alive and occasionally managing to contribute a little bit.
For my level I was actually very powerful because I was ahead on WBL since we still shared fairly evenly. But within the group I was way subpar. Wasn't very fun at all toward the end.On the other hand, now that we got rid of that, no one is very worried about death at all. It is no big deal.
I don't really like either and don't have a solution.
Perhaps the answer is to have the player roll up a character that is only ever one level behind the rest of the party.
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My solution to the "weaker character" problem is to simply ignore the idea of death penalties: The penalty will be that you do not have the ability to play your character until you are revived, and you have to pay some gold. Depending on how much gold the party has, you may have to deal with a couple neg levels, but those will be healed eventually. I even keep that character's exp up to match the rest of the party while they're dead.
If you start making them lose levels, then the urge to make a clone of your existing character and kill the old one gets stronger, and justifiably so: You want to be on par with everyone else, not behind them. This is part of why reviving gives neg levels instead of real level loss now.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I can't say that the integrity of death at my table would outweigh one of my players being so unhappy about a character death. All of the solutions that require the player to create a character of a different race/class/alignment/etc. serve to reinforce the painfulness of character death. I haven't had this situation arise at my table, but I have seen carefully constructed, well-loved PCs bite it within 1-3 game sessions of a new campaign (often to a random encounter). The new PCs that replace them are never so well crafted and often have a difficult time fitting into the ongoing plot(s). On top of that, the player usually loses enthusiasm for the game.
At the end of the day, it's your table and your players, but I'd recommend taking a step back and asking whether death needs to be such a severe penalty or if something can't be done to accommodate what the player is seeking while not disrupting the verisimilitude of the game.
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I can't say that the integrity of death at my table would outweigh one of my players being so unhappy about a character death. All of the solutions that require the player to create a character of a different race/class/alignment/etc. serve to reinforce the painfulness of character death. I haven't had this situation arise at my table, but I have seen carefully constructed, well-loved PCs bite it within 1-3 game sessions of a new campaign (often to a random encounter). The new PCs that replace them are never so well crafted and often have a difficult time fitting into the ongoing plot(s). On top of that, the player usually loses enthusiasm for the game.
At the end of the day, it's your table and your players, but I'd recommend taking a step back and asking whether death needs to be such a severe penalty or if something can't be done to accommodate what the player is seeking while not disrupting the verisimilitude of the game.
To help avoid this very situation, I give every player exactly one "deus ex machina" card for each campaign. They can play this to prevent a death that by all rights should've happened. If they do so, they miraculously stabilized 1 HP from death and/or had someone or something save their behind. In some cases, they might be the one to save themselves (their "last hurrah" attack takes the last bad-guy out and they stabilize at 1HP from death). It's important to get creative in response to these being played to help keep the atmosphere, rather than just saying "rocks fall, bad guys die."
This happened in my current campaign (I'm actually a player in this one, but the DM inherited this rule from me) when two characters were knocked out by zombies that we weren't prepared to handle. The other two would have escaped, but an NPC ally of ours (who did have good reason to be in the area) showed up and saved the knocked out characters. The two who were knocked out both had to give up their deus ex machina cards.
This card often gets played some time in the first couple of levels, but is rarely needed after that (by which point they can get revived instead).
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It's been something that's been brought up in another RPG system before...then the players brought up that they couldn't understand why they wouldn't be allowed to. I've been really trying to find a good argument. I may just use the lemming analogy.
It's not a video game. It's supposed to be about roleplaying a personality and a character that it happens can do fantastical things. Not about playing stats and powers which is what your players are telling you with that attitude.
My players have NEVER tried to do anything like that and if they did I would tell them NO.
It's supposed to be about whatever makes it the most fun for everyone. You like roleplaying fine. They might not. Just because you don't like the way they play doesn't make the way they play wrongIt's been something that's been brought up in another RPG system before...then the players brought up that they couldn't understand why they wouldn't be allowed to. I've been really trying to find a good argument. I may just use the lemming analogy.It's not a video game. It's supposed to be about roleplaying a personality and a character that it happens can do fantastical things. Not about playing stats and powers which is what your players are telling you with that attitude.
My players have NEVER tried to do anything like that and if they did I would tell them NO.
I never said it was flat out Wrong although I do take a severe stance on it. I just gave my opinion. And in my opinion making the same character every time you die is doing nothing but hindering yourself from experiencing the vast breadth of awesomeness that Pathfinder has to offer.
It's not a video game. It's supposed to be about roleplaying a personality and a character that it happens can do fantastical things. Not about playing stats and powers which is what your players are telling you with that attitude.
My players have NEVER tried to do anything like that and if they did I would tell them NO.
You know...that's actually the mindset I was hoping to get them out of. At the moment for them, it's far more about cool powers than personality...
Our rule is that if you die you come in a full level lower than the lowest level character in the party.
I also agree with the video game vs personality. I try to avoid the cool powers mindset, but its hard to do sometimes.
If its a cool powers problem its solvable by asking the player what they want their character to do rather than what abilities they want.
With all the options in pathfinder you should be able to suggest to your player an alternate build for the character he wants to play. In short get a concept and build around it insted of tagging a concept onto a sheet.
I recall a guideline from 3.5 where a PC who died a particularly herioc death should be allowed to re-roll 2 levels lower than the rest of the party, but that was just a guideline and this is pathfinder. Alternatively, tell one of your PCs to grab craft wondrous item and craft a Salve of the Second Chance. Or simply buy it from some merchant who has magic items worth at least 1.6k gold. It keeps you the same class, but you get to experience it from the eyes of a different race (albeit with two negative levels).
You know...that's actually the mindset I was hoping to get them out of. At the moment for them, it's far more about cool powers than personality...
One of the things you can do(and I do this before every game) to promote character growth and personality, is to email a question to your players the week before game. The question should be something that makes them think in character. Then you reward the players that respond to your question with some extra XP.
For example some qood questions to ask:
"If your character wasn't adventuring what would he probably be doing?"
"What does your character think of the opposite sex? Do they have a family, significant other or does adventuring take precedence?"
"What do you think your strongest personality traits are?"
"Who in the party do you trust or respect the most. Who do you trust or respect the least?"
The answers don't have to be really long but there needs to be a reward for your players for taking the time to answer.
And slowly they will start to think more 'in character' and more about their motivations and personalities.
Hope that helps.
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One of the things you can do(and I do this before every game) to promote character growth and personality, is to email a question to your players the week before game. The question should be something that makes them think in character. Then you reward the players that respond to your question with some extra XP.For example some qood questions to ask:
"If your character wasn't adventuring what would he probably be doing?"
"What does your character think of the opposite sex? Do they have a family, significant other or does adventuring take precedence?"
"What do you think your strongest personality traits are?"
"Who in the party do you trust or respect the most. Who do you trust or respect the least?"The answers don't have to be really long but there needs to be a reward for your players for taking the time to answer.
And slowly they will start to think more 'in character' and more about their motivations and personalities.
Hope that helps.
I like that idea. I will try to use next campaign I run. Thanks.
So I recently had my first PC death, being flanked and luck of the dice managed to do him in. Since the other PCs were so close to getting to leveling to level 4, I allowed him to reroll nearing 4 but minus 1,000XP. Basically the same character was rolled, same stats, same class, same bloodline, same alignment and the same personality. Only HP, which had to be rolled, was different.
Is there something against doing this? I don't want to start a trend where all players treat their PCs are merely disposable lemmings...
I'm thankful that my players are all mature, very experienced players who really value role-playing over combat and cool powers. All of the characters in my game built their characters around a concept, and most players chose less-than-optimized feat and class ability selections to reflect the concept. None of my players would even think of Xeroxing the character sheet and only changing the name, and I'm very glad of that.
I think that character death needs to be a real possibility in order to maintain a sense of drama in an RPG. Even in situations when bringing back the dead is possible, there needs to be some sense of loss.
I also think that it's important to set expectations of what happens in the event of PC death before the campaign starts. I have a "home rules" document that I handed out before character generation that explained that. I actually make bringing back the dead a little more difficult than in the core rules.
Here's an excerpt from my home rules document, in case anyone's interested...
Character Death
A) Bringing Back the Dead
In this world, death for almost everyone really is the end. While there are rare and powerful individuals who have access to magic that can in some circumstances bring the dead back from the Great Beyond, there are relatively few individuals who have such power. The most common spells used to revive the dead are breath of life and reincarnate.
1) raise dead is a sixth-level spell. There are few divine casters in the world capable of casting sixth-level magic outside of major cities, and getting an audience with such people can be difficult.
2) breath of life can revive someone who is in negative hit points below their CON scores for up to three rounds following death. After a character is in negative hit points below negative CON, he loses 5 hp per round, so a caster with breath of life needs to act quickly and roll high.
3) Pact of the Damned: A new 6th-level arcane spell that allows a caster to bring back the dead for a year and a day in exchange for the raised character's soul. (See New Spells section for details.)
4) reincarnate, resurrection, true resurrection, wish, and miracle are unchanged. Note that casters of 7th, 8th, and 9th-level spells are even more rare than casters of 6th-level spells.
B) Replacement PCs
In general, a player can bring in a new character after the death of his or her PC. The new PC needs to be appropriate to the plot and location of the current storyline. The new PC will be one level lower than the current APL of the party, at a minimum number of XPs for that level.
Note that there may be points in the story that would be inappropriate to bring in a new PC fully of the player's design. In these situations, the GM and player will work together to craft an appropriate PC or adapt an existing available NPC into the new PC.
You know...that's actually the mindset I was hoping to get them out of. At the moment for them,It's not a video game. It's supposed to be about roleplaying a personality and a character that it happens can do fantastical things. Not about playing stats and powers which is what your players are telling you with that attitude.
My players have NEVER tried to do anything like that and if they did I would tell them NO.
Emphasis in the quote mine. And as their GM you need to recognize that.
A GM's job is not to push players toward any abstract idea of what they think "proper" playing is. That is, in my opinion, one of the worst things a GM can do. The absolute most important job of the GM, without fail, is to make the game fun for yourself and for the players at the table.
I'm guessing your group hasn't been playing long. Wanting the cool powers, and crunching numbers, and playing the mechanical parts of your character generally come first. Role-playing and worrying about character motivations generally come later on in one's PF career. So for now, don't sweat it much.
If someone really liked their character and wants to play something similar, it's not the GM's job to tell him he's not "playing the game right". It's his job to make sure the player has fun. If something in the campaign world prevents this, then maybe something's wrong with the world. For the player, the world doesn't exist until he encounters it. If he has to encounter it with a character he doesn't like, he won't be engaged because he's unhappy with his character - which means you, the GM, have failed him in some regard.
Make the game fun for yourself and others. If your opinions on what the game should be get in the way of that, you either need to set your opinions aside, or let someone else run the game.