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Hi all,
I've been running my first DMing game using the Carrion Crown adventure path. Things had been going fairly well through the first book and well into the second.
One player retired his character due to roleplaying aspects (He got arrested, if he hadn’t then he was leaving to join the circus) and he brought in a new character of the same level with funds equal to what a character of that level is meant to get.
This character was a bit stronger than the others because of being able to spend all his money on his own character rather than having shared party funds that people were withdrawing from as needed.
Soon afterwards 2 other characters were killed in combat including that same character who had just been brought in (Standing in the open while wielding fire is never a good thing with trolls around especially with an advanced one directing them "Kill the burny man!"). So more new characters came in at the same level and they got ready to go out again to rescue the bodies of their comrades. Pretty much straight away another character died and a new build came in and I wondered if I was being too harsh on the party.
However later on this player stated to me that he and another player who had died were of the opinion that since there was no real penalty for death they were just going to build characters to last a little while, let themselves die and bring in characters who were optimized to that level.
This idea of deliberately getting characters killed for profit and to bring in builds that are weak at low levels at their peak rubs me the wrong way and feels like a snub to the players who struggle to keep their less optimized characters alive. It also really surprises me as both of these players are normally excellent role-players.
So I am trying to work out a way to curb this behaviour before it becomes a real problem for me.
I am considering running with the old school new characters start at average party level -1 to at least punish this kind of behaviour and promote actually trying to keep their characters alive. If a character leaves due to fully developed role-playing reasons then I won’t punish them for that.
Also I want to arrange to have a chat with the players in question and let them know my concerns. I am to let them know that planning character death as a for profit scheme seems like power gaming, something both of them have complained about in length in the past.
Death happens but I am surprised at how much of a difference it seems to make for the DM to suddenly have much stronger and optimized characters appear essentially from nowhere. Does anyone have any other advice or have come across this situation before?
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1) Dictate the new loot.
2) Have them come in a level lower.
3) Give boons to survivors.
4) Do not allow the players to assume entitlement.
Feel free to use these in any combination.
It seems the issue is that the players don't care about the story. =/. Get them to care about character survival, and hopefully they will start to care about the campaign =)
GNOME
imho i think bringing new characters in at their old level -1 would work.
but the issue seems like that the new characters get more money based on the flat rules for how much money a character of a certain level should have. are you sure the amount of loot the players are getting is correct? or if you are consciously trying to keep money away from the characters are you changing the amount of money that chart gives when they make a new character?
most pathfinder characters will want specific magical items geared to what they do, so its usually better to buy them instead of using what you find, since there are so many variations of magic items you arent very likely to find what youre looking for out of random treasure. if you make sure that the loot characters are getting will be equivalent for their level, including things like only selling magic items for half value, then it shouldnt be much of a problem. the main problem being when characters dying and the party keeping the dead persons stuff, and a new character comes in with that same amount of money worth of gear. but you can solve that with just not letting the new person have any gear (the party finds a new person to join them to replace that guy who just died! unfortunately they just freed him from imprisonment and his gear has already been taken by his captors! oh no!)
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It seems the issue is that the players don't care about the story. =/. Get them to care about character survival, and hopefully they will start to care about the campaign =)
I thought I had been. The party seemed really excited about the roleplaying aspects. I mean one player retired his character due to filling the travel time with the circus and having the party do some performances. He decided his character was going to join the circus and worked with me on a new character who the party started to interact with before he even made the switch.
It seems like the dungeon sections of the book which are light on roleplaying seem to make the characters forget what they are doing. I have already altered the dungeon to add roleplaying in and tie up some loose story items. I'm trying not to have the adventure have too many large sections of dungeons without plot.
but the issue seems like that the new characters get more money based on the flat rules for how much money a character of a certain level should have. are you sure the amount of loot the players are getting is correct? or if you are consciously trying to keep money away from the characters are you changing the amount of money that chart gives when they make a new character?
Part of the problem is the adventure path. It does give the proper wealth as what was calculated in the Carrion Crown thread but a lot of it is in consumable items such as potions and alchemical items. The party seems to hang onto these items and forget their sale value leaving them short. IE they are sitting on about 12k gp worth of items that they never use but haven't sold.
I'm GMing my first serious game as well, and I've found it difficult to keep the game morally and technically challenging without alienating the players. I'm succeeding, however. The characters are so fearful of dying that they don't want to continue, but they're so swept up in the narrative that they are compelled to go forth regardless of their fears. It is at least effective within the context of the campaign, which is horror themed.
Anyway, onto my point. No one has died yet, but given my particular situation, I don't think it would be unfair to have them reroll new characters as APL -1. That might not solve the issue of loot and character wealth, but it seems to be a sufficient (but not game damaging) penalty for death that would allow new characters to be viable. Having a balanced penalty for death will allow your characters to stick around for longer amounts of time, which will ultimately be good for the development of the narrative.
Tough call. Lower the GP new characters get?
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I have to say I've never encountered a group that was eager to kill off their characters, even if they wanted to try new builds or whatever. I'd never punish players whose characters died in heroic combat, but if characters are dying while trying to complete adventure objectives and it's because they've made careless or purposeful mistakes, I'd at least penalized their advancement. Perhaps parts of the module are now 'failed' and they have to move on, or the rewards and XP are reduced because of other issues related to their delay.
Are these all relatively new players? That makes a difference, too. I guess it comes down to doing what's fun and fair for everyone involved. If some players (I don't know how many you have) are trying to keep their characters alive while others are playing carelessly, there's clearly some sort of disconnect regard to expectations.
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Are these all relatively new players? That makes a difference, too. I guess it comes down to doing what's fun and fair for everyone involved. If some players (I don't know how many you have) are trying to keep their characters alive while others are playing carelessly, there's clearly some sort of disconnect regard to expectations.
I suppose I should have brought up the party makeup. I have 5 players:
Alchemist (Original surviving member) - Casual player. Has her character planned out for a while and plans to head into Master Chymist. I have been helping to foreshadow her mental break. Much of the plot now is focused in on her since most of the newer characters don't yet have a heavy link to the plot this will change soon enough.
Sorcerer (Original surviving member Currently on hiatus) - Experienced role-player. Character has a terminal illness which was worked out pre start of the campaign with eventual retirement due to succumbing to the disease at the start of book 3. Currently resting in town due to staying up for several days straight using stimulants aggravating her illness. Player switched to a paladin and died helping the surviving party members escape from a troll attack. Player is now running a barbarian who is related to a dead character. He made the comments regarding replacement characters and already has two lined up.
Cavalier (3rd character for this player) - Experienced Player. Originally was playing a rogue who got arrested his next character was a magus who became lunch for trolls by running in under invisibility and fighting the advanced troll solo then trying to burning hands while being unprotected and being on less than 10hp. The other player who made the comments regarding replacement and has one lined up.
Gunslinger (3rd Character for this player) - Experienced player. Played a wonderful superstitious barbarian until he realised he had made a math error with his rage and should have been dead 20hp ago. Replaced with a mixed bag undead killer who retired due to sheer lack of undead but was endless fun for the short time he was there and will likely be showing up randomly again. Replaced with straight gunslinger. Player plans to retire from role-playing at the end of the year and shall be sorely missed.
Cleric (Newly joined to the campaign) – First game in Pathfinder. Player is just trying to learn the ropes of the system and is trying to get into her character. Her character is well built but she still doesn’t quite know everything she can do.
So it is surprisingly the experienced players that are the problem here.
you don't need to mechanically penalize these characters for dying. you merely need to make encounters easier so that they feel less need to use mass sacrifice tactics. the easy way to fix this is to dumb down some of your less intelligent monster's tactics. instead of focus firing the trolls on the firemaking caster, try breaking them up into smaller groups. adventure paths tend to offer less treasure than normal anyway. maybe, some of the monsters retained damage from the previous wipes or something.
The experienced players probably have a lot of character ideas they want to try out, and this must seem like a good opportunity to do so. I can't say for sure what to do in the meantime aside from talking to them about your concern, but if the trend continues with subsequent campaigns then I would be concerned too.
I would give them 70% of the loot a character of their level normally has, and on top of that you always come back one level lower than the lowest party member. I would also not allow a TPK.
Example:
Everyone starts at level 7, and if everyone tries to die you make sure at least one person lives. That bring the others back at level 6, and with 70% of the normal wealth for that level.
If they try it again, make sure that the at least on level 6 person stays alive. They then come back at level 5 with 70% of the WBL for that level.
Damn you're a bastard aren't ya'? ;)
Couple things here. It sounds like a lot of dying is going on and your crew feel like they have no hope of living, hence the desire to not get attatched to characters headed to the meatgrinder of your game. "Just roll up a new one, the DM is gonna kill us no matter what we do, at least this way we'll finally get some decent gear..." You may want to tone it down a touch. I'm not at the table so I can't say for sure but when the party stops caring about staying alive you're headed in the wrong direction.
The other point is maybe you shouldn't allow new characters at all. Go REAL old school. Someone dies, the party needs to get him back alive or move on without that player. Die this week, don't bother showing up next week....unless we can rez you.
LOL@CB:
I just can't stand metagaming to that extent. If that is how they want to play the game we can do that, but they won't like it. I might even have the NPC not send his minions against them.
Breaking the 4th wall GiTP style:
BBEG:Now I will kill you since you are underleveled
PC:What?
BBEG:Oh you don't see what I did? I moved all of minions out of the way so you would not level. That puts you at 5 levels below my CR instead of just 2.
Then after handing their arses to them, if they decide to stay, we can decide if want to play the game or try to game the system.
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you don't need to mechanically penalize these characters for dying. you merely need to make encounters easier so that they feel less need to use mass sacrifice tactics. the easy way to fix this is to dumb down some of your less intelligent monster's tactics. instead of focus firing the trolls on the firemaking caster, try breaking them up into smaller groups. adventure paths tend to offer less treasure than normal anyway. maybe, some of the monsters retained damage from the previous wipes or something.
I did the fight myself with the same characters as a test and while it should have scared the bajeezus out of them it shouldn't have been the near party wipe it was. It was a bunch of bad dice rolling mixed with bad tactics.
If the magus had hit with his big attack he would have dealt about 50 odd damage but he fumbled (He rolled damage and d20 together near max damage, nat 1 on d20).
If the cleric had remembered she had a fireball spell it would have helped.
If the magus hadn’t charged in under invisibility they would have been able to back off and the trolls would have had to fight one at a time or face squeezing rules instead of trying to be aggressive and getting multiple full attacks and provokes resulting in the paladin getting surrounded and his eventual death.
If the magus had used his pearl of power to get back vanish and run back to the healer he would have survived.
There were lots of things they did wrong tactically that could have turned the battle. I have now checked the forums for other 'problem' encounters and will be keeping an eye on those encounters marked as potential killers.
In the end I don’t want to do this to punish the players. I want to do it to stop the idea of profit by sacrifice. People shouldn’t be thinking well I’ll use this character until level X where my SUPERMEGAAWESOME dazzling display character works optimally or my druids pet gets its size increase or I’ll spend all this characters gold on his weapon then I’ll kill that character and loot that weapon with my guy who just spent all his gold on his armour and shield.
Couple things here. It sounds like a lot of dying is going on and your crew feel like they have no hope of living, hence the desire to not get attatched to characters headed to the meatgrinder of your game. "Just roll up a new one, the DM is gonna kill us no matter what we do, at least this way we'll finally get some decent gear..." You may want to tone it down a touch. I'm not at the table so I can't say for sure but when the party stops caring about staying alive you're headed in the wrong direction.
The other point is maybe you shouldn't allow new characters at all. Go REAL old school. Someone dies, the party needs to get him back alive or move on without that player. Die this week, don't bother showing up next week....unless we can rez you.
The barbarian player opted to have his character die after realising his math error with hp after the fight with Vorkstag and Grine. Most likely had he calculated correctly then the party would have healed him more and he would have survived.
The trolls at the gate of book 2 caused the death of the magus and paladin. The party went in loud which got the attention of the boss troll as well. 3 trolls are really bad news even if the worst of them is using a 2d8 crossbow with a not spectacular attack bonus. And when the magus goes invisible, dashes past the two trolls and aggravates the boss troll into melee it caused havoc on the battle field.
Though all these character changes have happened within 3 sessions so it may be that they have that feeling of impending doom. I’ll keep that in mind and if the players feel that way in our talk I’ll pull some punches for the rest of the dungeon. Give them a chance to get into their characters.
characters that retire, retire with thier gear. easy enough.
or declare that 15% of each new pc's wealth must be spent on consumables to ensure survivability.
it is also a good idea to enforce that no more than 50% of your wealth may be spent on any one item.
another idea, is to ask each player what they want to play next and consult Ashiel about improving thier builds. she might exploit the occasional loophole here and there, but her recommended builds and tactics can allow even Raistlin Majere to survive fairly well.
in fact, forcing each character to take multiple compatible roles helps. such as a switch hitter fighter or an archery bard.
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It is a delicate problem. I would first try bringing in new pcs at a level lower and maybe 90% gold, with the other 10% being made up for in those party resources like wands of cure light wounds. I would also be very skeptical maybe even restrictive of allowing changes like full bab classes to full spell casting progression classes. I would hope the new PC could for fill the same role. Though they should be free to pick another class. If they still seem to be suicideing pcs, consider bringing. Them in two levels lower. Of course that opens up the can of worms about weather they could still make a meaningful contribution and if they are too squishy for the challenges ahead or if the challenges for them are too easy for the higher level pcs. May forcing many encounters of medium difficulty would stretch out their resouces making it challenging but not too much nor little. That becomes a pain to string that many equal length encounter together, especially for an adventure path where th encounters are prewritten.
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I would go for two solutions.
1. If someone dies, they come back as an NPC who they have already met in the game: this emphasises the roleplaying aspects and means they cannot 'game the system'.
2. The GM uses random table rolls to generate loot for new PCs. They can then trade that stuff when they reach an appropriate town. You can use The random treasue generator for loot.
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I have encountered this problem from time to time over the years. Typically the player is new to gaming looking only at numbers on a page and not intangibles in the game. Generally I have a strong roleplaying incentive in game not to die. Like your character has been recognized and has stature in a town. He is a hero and that comes with inherent bonuses that a fresh PC has not earned. This typically leads the PC's to want to remain with characters because they grow attached.
But when it happens, or when a player just does not like his character at all, I typically let them rebuild but make sure that they are not over optimized with feats (Ex. Skill Focus was great at low level but now that my character is level 10 will a +25 I'll skip that and just take all power chain feats)and they are never allowed to spend more than 50% of there loot on any one item which typically ends up being there main weapon.
Lastly my players know that if I suspect someone is doing this or any time people start acting stupid for any reason other than getting very tired I punish them. I always reward well made plans and always punish blatant stupidity. Game I'm running now the group went into a spider infested dungeon thinking they were all cool with there shiny +1 swords and neglected to consider other gear (antitoxins and extra potions) and 2 of 5 didn't make it out.
To much death destroys players desire to survive.
So i would say your making things to difficult. Some player groups just arent super clever so you need to dumb down the tactics a bit. Stay away from focus fire, peroid. That is something that just kills players and should only be used in special occasions.
Did you ever consider that death isnt the end for the character? Instead of killing them, you have them live but they are captured. And when they break out they have lost 15% of their gear and loot. This makes it so they are still part of the story, that dieing is not the boon they think it is and with less gear it really hurts to die.
Lastly, and prolly the most important part, is who wants to read a book where all the main characters keep dying and keep getting replaced?
Well the same goes for game, the story that you have taken time to build is flushed down the toilet when a player is killed. Character death should not occur that often, and usually the majority of the starting group should live to the end. Give or take some depending on style of game.
You also need to stop players from just retiring characters.
Went off to join the circus? Really? I would be like, uhm no, as you didnt make a circus performer, you made a character to play long term in this game. That is a requirement for character creation, otherwise allowing them to just build characters to be retired also sets the stage for constant character changing which is only slightly better than character death.
Take control of your players and let them know that such gaming style isn't going to fly. Upon character death, make new character at same lvl, i would only allow them 60% character wealth, half of which is the most a single item can be, and 10% of that has to be consumables. This really sends the message home about dying. This way they can still complete the challenges as they arent lowewr level, but they will have to really economize their gear. So old busted jobby, vs new hondas. By dieing they will never get all the high end bling for thier level. This way surviving party members aregetting and maintaining the stronger gear. I would also not allow new characters access to party loot until say 3 sessions have passed. This way again they dont just show up thinking that oh, sinse we dont have anyone to use that wand of healing, i wont buy one with my wealth, and just get the party to give me the one they have.
But restating it as well, you the gm have to be careful about how you pit challenges to them. Maybe break the encounters into two, as in half str per battle so the players become comfortable again as surviving as a team. Dont be afraid to offer gm advice, as in sayng things like "you want to fight this super tough troll all by yourself at 10hp? If he says yes, ask him why. If they are just doing things to die then they wont have a reason and you can call BS on them. At the least, keep them alive and drag thier faces thru the mud a few times. Get them a little angry at the villians in the game, so that they want some payback. ext.
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The trouble with punishing death too heavily is that weakening the new character makes them that much more likely to die again and come back even weaker, which quickly turns back into a feedback loop that ends in the player leaving the game.
For example, suppose you go with some of the penalties for death that people have suggested here: come back one level below the party with only 60% wealth. But suppose a player dies twice (which, I'm not sure from what you've written, may or may not have already happened). Well, now they're two levels behind the party and have been cut down to 36% wealth (of which some more is being spent on consumables). And since they're a couple of levels lower, their WBL is about half as much as the rest of the party, so they actually have less than a fifth as much wealth as everyone else (even before deducting consumables). With fewer levels and abysmal equipment, they're that much more likely to be killed yet again (especially if they're meant to fill any sort of tank role). Which means they're weaker than ever, which leads to further death...
Yes, people trying to off themselves is a problem, but when people are already dying on a regular basis anyhow, the solution is not to impose harsher and harsher penalties on death to discourage suicide - because then when people actually are killed in battle, they get screwed over.
I mean, unless you want to go back to old-school "restart from first level" rules, but if anyone asked me to walk into Book 3 of an adventure path as a first-level character, I wouldn't bother joining their table.
The trouble with punishing death too heavily is that weakening the new character makes them that much more likely to die again and come back even weaker, which quickly turns back into a feedback loop that ends in the player leaving the game.
For example, suppose you go with some of the penalties for death that people have suggested here: come back one level below the party with only 60% wealth. But suppose a player dies twice (which, I'm not sure from what you've written, may or may not have already happened). Well, now they're two levels behind the party and have been cut down to 36% wealth (of which some more is being spent on consumables). And since they're a couple of levels lower, their WBL is about half as much as the rest of the party, so they actually have less than a fifth as much wealth as everyone else (even before deducting consumables). With fewer levels and abysmal equipment, they're that much more likely to be killed yet again (especially if they're meant to fill any sort of tank roll). Which means they're weaker than ever, which leads to further death...
Yes, people trying to off themselves is a problem, but when people are already dying on a regular basis anyhow, the solution is not to impose harsher and harsher penalties on death to discourage suicide - because then when people actually are killed in battle, they get screwed over.
I mean, unless you want to go back to old-school "restart from first level" rules, but if anyone asked me to walk into Book 3 of an adventure path as a first-level character, I wouldn't bother joining their table.
you don't need to penalize the new characters for the death of the deceased. not all players are as clever as you would think. just tone down the tactics of the monsters. there is a reason that focus fire isn't recommended. in fact, focus fire provides more benefit for the monsters than the PCs, and is easier for the monsters to perform as well.
while "Kill the Firemaker" might be a goal for a group of trolls. the trolls should have to worry about more than just the firemaker. the melee damage dealers may inflict significant wounds that take them longer to recover.
If a PC dies in our game, you can either get the rez (with just a negative level that vanishes when you next level up rather than an actual xp penalty) or you can make a new guy one level lower.
The players are attached to their guys, so I don't see them NOT getting the raise dead unless circumstances make it impossible.
In your case, I'd let them come in with a character 1 level lower than the higest member. If the new, lower level guy dies, they can bring in a new guy 1 level lower than the highest member. So if everynoe is 7, and a guy dies, he can make a new PC at level 6. If this level 6 guy dies, he can make a new level 6 guy.
I give the lower level guys more XP so they can catch up over time.
As Roberta Says: If you lower their level as punishment you're in danger of falling into a cycle of deaths due to the characters being too weak.
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My advice:
1, Reduce starting money down a level. Two levels if you want to make a point or be extra hard.
2, Reduce their stat buy fund by 1 or 2 points per death.
You now have players that don't want to die.
If those two methods don't work... it's time for different players.
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As Roberta Says: If you lower their level as punishment you're in danger of falling into a cycle of deaths due to the characters being too weak.
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.My advice:
1, Reduce starting money down a level. Two levels if you want to make a point or be extra hard.
2, Reduce their stat buy fund by 1 or 2 points per death.
Why are you agreeing with me and then proposing something that's pretty much equivalent to what I was just saying wasn't a good idea? Stacking mechanical penalties, be they stat points or levels or wealth penalties or whatever, all have the same problem.
But if you're going to punish anything, please, don't punish the point-buy points available - that's seriously the worst thing you could possibly impose as a death tax.
The most obvious reason is that, unlike wealth and levels, this is something permanent that the character will never fully catch up from; whereas lost wealth and levels are smoothed out after a few levels, but a character built on a lower point-buy now will still be behind on points in five levels' time. So now death doesn't just set you back right at this moment - it sets back all of your future characters for the entirety of all of their careers forever. The problems with that should be obvious.
I'm in a campaign that's been running for about a year now. I've died six times during it - some due to errors of mine (caught while sneaking around scouting), some less clearly so (I'm still not sure why that sorcerer decided to spend their action tossing a flaming sphere at the unconscious rogue, who couldn't sneak attack even while conscious due to the fog granting concealment, when there was a raging barbarian in the sorcerer's face). For a game like the OP's, with an average of one death per session, at least one player can easily have a string of deaths like this. Now, this was starting from a fifteen-point-buy. Apply your stat-point penalty, and my new character is now saddled with a three-point buy. The Basic NPC array is a three-point buy; those are stats built for farmhands, not adventurers.
But there's a less obvious reason, and one that makes this an especially bad method of addressing the problem at hand. Suppose someone dies and comes back with a weaker point-buy. Now there's somewhere where they're not going to be spending points but would have spent them otherwise. Where is that somewhere going to be? Probably not from their primary stats - the Fighter's not going to settle for low Strength (and certainly not low Con with this sort of rule in place!). No, they're going to pull the points from their secondary stats. Maybe the Fighter player didn't want to dump Int and play a cookiecutter dumb muscle, or dump Cha and be utterly hopeless out of combat, but is now forced to do so in order to afford the regular combat stats needed to remain effective.
In other words, the missing points don't come out of the stats that determine how effective the character is at their main job, so it's not a major mechanical setback. The missing points come out of the tertiary stats that make the character well-rounded and interesting.
If your goal is to make players get attached to and care about their characters, that's absolutely not what you want to do.
Please don't do this.
You're missing my point. My suggested Solutions are not needed for regular character deaths.
I was suggesting a way to deal with players that are deliberately killing off character to gain something. Players like that need severe consequences to persuade them from messing with the DM's hard work trying to run a campaign.
Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
Just to add some thoughts on this topic:
- For me carrion crown never managed archieve a lot of immersion. At least book 1 and the start of book 2 is rather bland and doesn't give you the peeling that YOU are the one who has to save everyone. So part of the problem might by the AP
- At low levels a pc death that forces the party to spend all their gold to have him ressurrected and restoration cast on him can be a financial blow from which the party can't ever recover. So if you want the players to stay with their PCs you should have the local cleric bring them back for free. That's my opinion. And that was my reason to refuse being brought back a second time with my first kingmaker pc. I didn't want the party to once more be totally broke because of my bad luck.
- Before you dacide that new PCs have to start at lower levels takt to your players. I for one would simply not do that and leave your game. Normally a player is punished enough by his character's death. And my experience is that if you come back lower level you will be killed again and be yet another level lower sooner or later.
- If your players (or some of them) metagame in a way you descibe you could for example ask them to spend some of their gold in a way decided by you. If they don't like the stuff they can exchange it for other gear in the normal 2:1 ratio for selling and buying ingame.
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For equipment, insist that new characters follow the strict guidelines in WBL:
Characters should spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level should spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins.
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Starting one level below APL seems better than one level below lowest other PC. We've done the latter in the past, but we had a string of retiring characters and new players followed by dying characters, which resulted in a party with levels around 4-5-5-6 turning into 2-3-4-5-7 or something like that. That kind of level divergence in a party becomes disruptive. We also had players who at alternating sessions had a new concept they wanted to try for about two game sessions. Eventually everyone realized how annoying this was getting.
Give advantages to those that survive for an extended time. Give them more treasure then you currently are (it seems like your players are running currently under wbl if its an advantage to start over with a new character). Even consider giving them individual cool litems that they probably couldn't afford at their level. Make it clear new characters wont have access to those same items. This will almost certainly solve the problem, without punishing players who die legitimately (unintentionally) by bringing them in at lower levels. I am always of the opnion to reward the behavior you want as a gm, instead of trying to punish the behavior you dont want.
I am always of the opnion to reward the behavior you want as a gm, instead of trying to punish the behavior you dont want.
+1
Something funny I was thinking about just now. If the characters die, then the trolls get their loot right?
So, the players should make about a bakers dozen of characters, run them up to the trolls, get themselves killed except for the last character per player. That means (12 characters (@lvl 5-6)X #of players)= huge bank for last set of characters. God I wish it worked that way LOL
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We run the following on character deaths, works well for us:
1. If a character dies, their items and wealth are considered gone, whether we imagine they are given a hero's burial, or things are donated, or willed to family, etc. Otherwise, a loop of deaths leads to wealth imbalance. The only exception is a quest-related item, party item (such as a bag of holding purchased jointly), or by DM discretion an artifact-style item.
2. Players come back at the Average Party Level with appropriate wealth for that level, no more than 50% may be spent on any one item. Across the board, in my games, new PCs are equipped less than players who didn't die. A player a level lower contributes less to combat and an imbalance like this may increase the chances of more party deaths.
From a role-playing perspective, my players don't like it when their characters die. In the current campaign, the group just hit 10th level, so deaths (permanent) should be far rarer. Still, we've seen a fair share of deaths at lower levels and only have 2 original survivor from 1st level with the 4-player group. Out of those 2, one is retired due to role-playing purposes. We've also had another player willingly give his character up after running afoul of an evil artifact that warped his character. Retirement is ok so long as it advances some storyline or enhances the game.
I make a big deal of character deaths, especially in Kingmaker where people are counting on them. When the Baron player died, their small kingdom had a day of mourning. People came to pay their respects. Maybe a family member comes in. There should never be a feeling that the character death is meaningless and we'll just roll up another.
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I'd like to thank everyone who has put in their 2cp on this topic.
Regarding the combat deaths, as a new DM I am still struggling to find the balance between challenging, easy and TPK. Through most of the first book I made the fights a little too easy until the last boss. Throughout this book they have gone from slogfests to near tpks to piddling easy fights as I try to get the balance right.
It is a fine line that I am trying to work because what is CR+or-1 depends on the party and that really is a matter for another thread. The experienced players know when I am softening up fights and after a few soft balls want a higher challenge. Going hard at them flusters the casual and beginner players into making errors which can get the party into serious trouble (Especially since they are the only sources of healing) and some of the fights are outright hard even for experienced players. All I can do is adjust as I go and learn from my mistakes.
In the end I don't want to punish my players for dying. I want to stop the idea that killing characters is a good thing. I want them to be invested in their characters and want to keep them alive. The players are my friends and I want this to be an enjoyable experience for both them and me.
As such I intend to talk to the players who are intending cannon fodder characters and try and work with them to make characters that they want to keep alive. To try and find out why they feel this way and explain my side to them. As long as people aren't trying to do deliberately kill their characters then my issue doesn't exist. If they wish to continue in this vein then I may need to consider some of the steps that have been advised here. I’ll post again after my chat.
As a rule, my group buries the items of a character with that character, sends them home or otherwise removes them from the game. The old character's wealth is added up and the new character gets the cash equal to the old one's gear (with access to the Party Loot Wagon) to buy there new toys.
We also have Survivor Traits. It's pretty much the Campaign Traits function, and usually a similar level of power (plus one to save, to initiative, some extra cash) that the surviving characters can choose from. We theme them in a similar way to the Campaign traits too, so they're linked to someone they want to save (I ended up in relationship with Kendra during the Carrion Crown) or a link to a future part of the story that still makes sense then (another found out there grandfather was a member of the Whispering Way).
Needless to say, new character do not get those little perks. It adds to the character and makes them feel more connected to the story, as well as giving them a small (but certainly not game breaking) mechanical advantage over new ones.
Our entire party, with the exception of two players leaving because of personal issues and two new players joining is the same line up.
We use the hero point system from APG to prevent TPKs or PC deaths. It works very well.
The Players know that they have a last chance if something is going wrong or if they act to risky. They know also that this "luck" ressource is limited and so they dont overdo it.
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We've gone with a house-ruled version of the hero point system to help reduce party death, but have had several even with it:
Each level, have one use of a "Hero Point" and cannot accumulate more than this one use. May:
1. Cheat death (within reason) by stabilizing in negatives.
2. Before knowing results of a d20 roll, immediately force a reroll with +8 to your roll, +4 to an ally, or no modifier if an enemy.
Even then, it may not matter. Had a character being grappled to death force a reroll only to die the next round. Helps at lower levels though and gives that "movie hero" feel to pulling off the improbable in an impossible situation.
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Well I had the talk and the players acknowledged my concerns. We're working on fleshing out their current characters. I've also decided to tone back the combat until everyone gets settled into their new characters giving them time to care about the characters and want them to stay alive. Though I also did warn the players that the majority of gear in the dungeon would be aimed towards the surviving characters to help them catch up with the new power creep.
Rather than the hero point system I am using the Harrow one and adding the option to turn it in to escape death.
I am chiefly using the harrow system since the rogue stole a harrow deck at the start of the game and I intend to run the harrowing to explain why they are getting the powers they are and how these cards keep mysteriously appearing in their pockets.