How to Handle Death, a new Take

[Darth Smoke]

Hello everyone! I just wanted to share with you a custom way of handling death in the Carrion Crown Campaign i started 5 months ago.

The Background:

You see, prior to this campaign, our group had just played a VERY bloody and ultra-lethal campaign, where every player died 3-4 times. This resulted in a utter destruction of the spirit of the Hero and a general resentment, not versus the DM, but in general. Thus, after a while players just played a X hero, having no will to invest in him

The Fix:

So after a lot of thinking a planning i came up with this: I had Petros suspect that he was about to be assassinated, and so he devoted himself to creating a very powerful collection of Talismans that had the power to cheat Death for a while. The professor also knew that these Talisman needed to be fueled by a real death to be activated, so he was prepared when the WW came for him. The players received these talismans as part of Lorrimor's will, and were told that they "delay Death when it is caused by an evil or mindless force". In- game when a player who wears his talisman dies, his talisman glows, and his comrades can give him a chance to recuperate with a successful Heal Check of minimum 15 (No spells help). Each time a talisman is activated, the Dc for the next Death increases by +3, and the PC is at 1 HP and exhausted, all spells depleted.

So far we had many instances where the players almost died, and one actually did, at the hands of the Headless Horseman, after some failed Heal Checks. Through this Fix we gave life to a neglected Skill, and gave our group the chance to heavily invest in their characters, while altogether having truly dramatic moments as PC's try to revive their fallen comrades! What do you think of it?

[Sstrad]

I like the idea. Maybe I will steal it ^^.

[Lord Nikon]

Interesting, but wouldn't a Ring of Regeneration work just as well?

[Lithrac]

Except that a Ring of Regeneration wouldn't be affordable at low-level.

[Darth Smoke]

Also it seems that the consensus on the forums about the ring of Regeneration is that it does not prevent you from dying like Regeneration(Ex), because it affects living creatures. The main reason for the above idea was to enhance the drama and teamplay, not merely to avoid death.

[Lithrac]

Darth Smoke, I like your idea. However, maybe we should look at the problem from another angle, techniques of avoiding deaths (when possible). At my table, we've severely limited the number of deaths via a certain number of explicit or tacit rules/choices:

The hero points optional rule helps tremendously. It adds a certain amount of tension ("Should I use my hero point now to reroll my saving throw, or should I keep 2 hero points to cheat death at a later point?") and tactics to the game. So far, it has no cons for us. It promotes playing intelligently on the players' part, because if you don't your hero points will melt like snow at the end of the Reign of Winter AP.

A careful, well-planned approach by my players is also a tremendous factor. They've found out that charging blindly into the fray usually results in deaths they could have avoided. You could see it as "trial and error". I've found out that player choices have their share of responsibility in some PC's deaths. It's not just bad rolls.

A lenient appreciation of certain rules is also in order in some cases. It happens when players are in deep trouble (mostly on the verge of a TPK) and come up with a creative use of their abilities. One example of this was a RotRL session two months ago when...

Spoiler:

the PCs were on the run, trying to escape a TPK. The witch, ranger and cohort had teleported out, but the shoanti fighter (at 0 hero point) was in the negatives and unconscious on the battlefield. Their opponent was a necromancer, so it meant that his death would be permanent if they fled, because the necromancer would probably raise the corpse of the fighter PC. The druid came up with the idea of wild shaping into an air elemental to carry the fighter away, even managing of avoiding death (by the damage a target in the air elemental's whirlwind takes) by curing him regularly on his run attempt. I can't recall which rules should have made this impossible, but I allowed it because it was creative, heroic and was just fun to do. Everybody's fun is the most important thing to work towards imho.

Fudging the dice rolls should be rare, and used only at a critical point when you judge that your players are going to meet a dreadful fate that would disrupt the game flow as well as their fun because of a series of bad rolls. A slight tip of the balance can help fate not becoming doom for them, and keep the fun in one's games.

Despite all these techniques, death still happens, and should be made part of the story. My players had a great session once trying to find a cleric who could raise a dead PC and raise the funds for the diamonds required for the spell. It created a story in itself, and it worked so well that the dead PC came back to life only to embrace a newfound faith in Desna, the deity who had come to guide him from the afterlife back to his companions (and who had sanctioned the Raise Dead spell, of course).

[Darth Smoke]

Very nice approaches all of them!