I've experienced this including players stating "lets just jump of the cliff here and die so we can respawn in town". it was around this time I re-evaluated the threat of death to player characters.
1.) I call bullshit.
2.) How are they going to "respawn" if there's nobody around to resurrect them after taking their bodies back to the town?
3.) There's nothing that says you have to allow Raise Dead be an option for morons.
Ehhhhhh...
I think it's a different mindset of whether the PCs are the 'heroes' of the story... or just random peasants that the camera happens to point at once in a while.
Having grown up on comics I have ZERO problem with the knowledge that YES, Spiderman, Superman, Captain AMerica have all 'died' and come back.... but Uncle Ben, Capt. Stacy, and random villager #2 does not.
Actually Uncle Ben was revived once. It may been a clone but he technically was revived.
- All new characters start at 1st level, its up to the players to keep new characters alive long enough to be effective in the game.
We used to do this Old School, and it is no fun for anyone. Not for the player, who can't contribute, not for the party who have to share resources with a useless PC and also have to keep him alive, and not for the DM who can't use certain things like Fireball as even with a save a 1st is dead.
It may work a little now, but as the level disparity gets higher, it won't.
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I've experienced this including players stating "lets just jump of the cliff here and die so we can respawn in town". it was around this time I re-evaluated the threat of death to player characters.1.) I call b$!%+##*.
2.) How are they going to "respawn" if there's nobody around to resurrect them after taking their bodies back to the town?
3.) There's nothing that says you have to allow Raise Dead be an option for morons.
1 - I did that.
2 - They were going to "create" new characters with the same stats as their plan. When I pointed out it would be a TPK and no more campaign, they laughed. The threat of death was so removed with new characters at the same level they were not invested in the characters, or the story.
3 - They considered death and creating a new character a form of raise dead when they started at the same level.
As you might imagine I was not amused with this plan and ended up closing that gaming group not long after as it was not fun to run with such attitudes.
I have had those players in other games since, and they have understood the death has a meaning in my new campaigns is because of their antics and go out of their way "not" to die in these games.
Funnily enough, my long running PF campaign is the one that has treated death the most reverently. Only two PCs I can think of out of a cast of a couple dozen corpses has returned to life with resurrection magic, and most people the party has attempted to return to life that weren't PCs have incidentally bit the dust a second time (usually horribly).
In addition, two out of five existing PCs (both with 3+ years of playtime) are unlikely to return to life if someone attempts to raise them, as they've expressly stated in discussions IC.
As to why people aren't reckless with their lives when resurrection is a spell away - first I'd point out the cost. Second, even with wealth individuals powerful enough to know powerful clerics willing to cast such blessings for them, I can't see most beings wanting to return to the world from their afterlife (particularly goodly beings).
Reminds me of a song lyric - 'and if heaven is all that was promised to me, why don't I wish for death?'
TL:DR Death is what you make of it. While the outright penalties are smaller, that should do little to affect death in your campaign.
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- All new characters start at 1st level, its up to the players to keep new characters alive long enough to be effective in the game.We used to do this Old School, and it is no fun for anyone. Not for the player, who can't contribute, not for the party who have to share resources with a useless PC and also have to keep him alive, and not for the DM who can't use certain things like Fireball as even with a save a 1st is dead.
It may work a little now, but as the level disparity gets higher, it won't.
I may relax this rule with higher level characters, but I expect them to be more roleplay than roll play. Smart play can account for level disparity and still make it fun to play.
As long as it is fun for the group, then we will still do it...
And what is fun for my group might not be the same for everyone else.
This is currently being played in a dungeon crawl where we spend half the game laughing at the antics our characters get up to and the roleplaying they have done to save themselves.
- All new characters start at 1st level, its up to the players to keep new characters alive long enough to be effective in the game.We used to do this Old School, and it is no fun for anyone. Not for the player, who can't contribute, not for the party who have to share resources with a useless PC and also have to keep him alive, and not for the DM who can't use certain things like Fireball as even with a save a 1st is dead.
It may work a little now, but as the level disparity gets higher, it won't.
I may relax this rule with higher level characters, but I expect them to be more roleplay than roll play. Smart play can account for level disparity and still make it fun to play.
As long as it is fun for the group, then we will still do it...
And what is fun for my group might not be the same for everyone else.
This is currently being played in a dungeon crawl where we spend half the game laughing at the antics our characters get up to and the roleplaying they have done to save themselves.
Smart play only goes so far on the scale of compensation. and the only way a 1st level character can survive in a party of level 3 or higher characters is if he minmaxes his defenses, never engages in combat encounters appropriate to the higher level characters and has the party expends resources to keep him alive.
but then, it is no longer smart play but "lets have the party waste resources protecting the weakling."
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- All new characters start at 1st level, its up to the players to keep new characters alive long enough to be effective in the game.We used to do this Old School, and it is no fun for anyone. Not for the player, who can't contribute, not for the party who have to share resources with a useless PC and also have to keep him alive, and not for the DM who can't use certain things like Fireball as even with a save a 1st is dead.
It may work a little now, but as the level disparity gets higher, it won't.
I may relax this rule with higher level characters, but I expect them to be more roleplay than roll play. Smart play can account for level disparity and still make it fun to play.
As long as it is fun for the group, then we will still do it...
And what is fun for my group might not be the same for everyone else.
This is currently being played in a dungeon crawl where we spend half the game laughing at the antics our characters get up to and the roleplaying they have done to save themselves.
Smart play only goes so far on the scale of compensation. and the only way a 1st level character can survive in a party of level 3 or higher characters is if he minmaxes his defenses, never engages in combat encounters appropriate to the higher level characters and has the party expends resources to keep him alive.
but then, it is no longer smart play but "lets have the party waste resources protecting the weakling."
they do have 32 point buy and their con added to their hit points.
i.e. I have 1st level wizards with 20 hp. So they are not as fragile as normal.
they do have 32 point buy and their con added to their hit points.
i.e. I have 1st level wizards with 20 hp. So they are not as fragile as normal.
those bonus hit points do help in the early game. but unless you add them consistently (like every level or tier). they are going to slowly become less relevant.
that extra 14HP may matter at 1st level, but it's a lot less important in a 5th level or 10th level party.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Personally, I agree to some of the OPs problems. Death is trivialized by the current system - but I would rather make it harder for PCs to die than give out ready resurrections. If i look at the literary sources for most fantasy games, returning from the dead is a pretty huge deal - if it happens at all.
So personally, I would rather have some kind of "mandatory withdrawal" system in place than easily returning from the dead. Similar to "well, you've reached place X (negative HP? Some spells). If you continue to push on, you may die for real. Make a will save (DC = Character level) to stay engaged, or fall back / give up / fall unconscious for the rest of the day.
Personally, I agree to some of the OPs problems. Death is trivialized by the current system - but I would rather make it harder for PCs to die than give out ready resurrections. If i look at the literary sources for most fantasy games, returning from the dead is a pretty huge deal - if it happens at all.
So personally, I would rather have some kind of "mandatory withdrawal" system in place than easily returning from the dead. Similar to "well, you've reached place X (negative HP? Some spells). If you continue to push on, you may die for real. Make a will save (DC = Character level) to stay engaged, or fall back / give up / fall unconscious for the rest of the day.
I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but there are a set of d20 house rules out there called "raising the stakes" which have a house rule suggestion in there called the Death Flag and points called "Conviction" which work like Hero Points in a way. These conviction points can be spent for re-rolling or extra actions and under their rules (which want to make d20 more narrative) the PCs get 6 per session.
Under these rules the Death Flag is designed for campaigns where it might be impossible or at least incredibly hard for the PCs to come back from the dead. With these rules the default for whenever a PC dies is that the "dead" condition sets them as stable and 1hp above where their actual death would be (-con in Pathfinder). However, when a player chooses they can raise the "Death Flag", which signifies that the situation is such that the player is willing to see their PC die if necessary. A PC who raises their Death Flag (an immediate action) gets 6 conviction to spend and the flag stays raised until the PC pays 6 conviction to lower it. This is supposed to result in a game where death is hard to come back from in order to prevent random deaths. The player decides when a situation is worth risking the permanent loss of their PC, in all other cases death leaves the character unconscious but alive.
The system isn't something I am enamored with (I like to DM games where the PCs may have potential for greatness but aren't superheroes and could easily turn out to not even be footnotes in history) but it does provide for a way to have a world where raising the dead is an enormous feat while letting players be secure in the knowledge that they won't die unless they choose to risk it. The general idea could easily be modified to work with action points or hero points instead of the conviction rules, giving the PC a boost in these points when they choose to raise their death flag, or even as innate bonuses where PCs who raise their death flag get bonuses on all the rolls while the flag is raised or something I'm sure. Alternately, you could look to a system like FATE or any number of non-D&D systems out there that is more narrative based for failure options other than death for PCs in a world where raising is hard to do.
As to the original point of this winding and long thread, I'm against trivializing raising for the reason that it changes a lot of assumptions about the game world the PCs are a part of, but I tend to agree that the gold (diamond) tax is a clunky way of doing it. I have been toying with the idea of a shock roll and maximum raises limit similar to the AD&D rules for future games but I'm not going to spring any house rules on my players in the middle of my current games that change the way things work too drastically.
The strength of 'trivialized death' is very simple: it allows the same characters to play through a campaign from start to finish.
Granted, the PCs may have themselves an 'A4 scenario' and have to take things from there as a result of getting wiped out. Those can be fun too. ^______^
I can almost promise you that if a GM had his BBEG's raised almost every session then the player's would get because they believe on they should be able to do that and BBEG's are supposed to stay dead.
Not if the party Wizard is smart enough to summon a Daemon to kill the guy.
Once the BBEG dies, his soul is eaten by the fiend of Abaddon and he's gone for good.
The problem with treating death as if it were nothing is that it affects the world. If you have an entire world where people can be ressurrected for a promise to a god, then there are no atheiests, there is no one unaligned with a god. The rules about clerics who worship no god goes away.
Additionally, you have MASSIVE overpopulation, since every time someone dies, they promise to do something for a god and pop back up. Oh, look, bandits, fight to the last man, if we die, the gods will bring us back.
...
Ehhhhhh...
I think it's a different mindset of whether the PCs are the 'heroes' of the story... or just random peasants that the camera happens to point at once in a while.
Having grown up on comics I have ZERO problem with the knowledge that YES, Spiderman, Superman, Captain AMerica have all 'died' and come back.... but Uncle Ben, Capt. Stacy, and random villager #2 does not.
not EVERYTHING that happens to hero #1, will happen to NPC #1. Batman broke his back and was back walking around in a year or two... Batgirl stayed in a chair for MANY years...
Just because good things happen to ONE player... does not mean the world should stop spinning and fall off its axis...
Really, I think it depends on what the DM expects. The fellowship of the ring went the way with only 2 PC deaths, and one came back. SOME DM's on here seem disappointed if there isn't a PC dying every 3 game nights...
If it's a GOOD death, I'm fine with it... If it was a suck death or happens to soon... they yeah, I'd want him to come back.
too MANY ressurections can seem lame and cheap... regardless of the 'cost'. It all depends on the night, the group, and the DM.
That's actually a really bad argument for trivializing ressurections. If you look at the comic books you're talking about, yes, the heros have come back from the dead... but it wasn't just someone paying five thousand dollars and waving their small pinky. Bringing them back from the dead usually involved a complex story all it's own, in other words, their friends went on a quest.
Comic books are actually a really good argument for making death permanent, unless there's an epic quest to bring the person back.
i agree that that is a good reason to remove both the diamond cost and the negative levels. characters with negative levels will only die faster, as will characters with ability damage or ability drain.If you want death to be non trivial then one of two things has to happen, either death has to become significantly less likely(almost certainly not what you're aiming for), or character creation has to become significantly simpler.
If you're going to kill off a guy every game session don't expect anyone to show up with epic backstories and roleplaying genius or optimized characters you're going to get generic Bob the Barbarian #5 and Wally the Wizard #2.
At least I know I'm not willing to put the 5+ hours of time it take for proper character creation under the current ruleset along with thought time on making him a proper person on some schmuck you're just going to kill off in like 3 sessions before telling me to do it again because death is supposed to be "hard".
This is a big issue from a fun standpoint. If I die mid session, w I am probably done for the night unless my party can raise me. In which case I am out until they do that. If I am lucky, I died near the end of the dungeon and I will be raised soon. If I am unlucky, I may not be raised till the end of the session anyway. If Raise dead were free, its much more likely someone in the party has a scroll of it or will cast it themselves.
I think the best argument for removing the diamond dust cost is that it reduces the time players spend unable to play.
I'm so glad someone finally pointed out the downside to all these jerk GMs in this thread advocating killing a player character at least once a game...
Oh wait, not a single person has advocated this.
Perhaps, if you can't manage your games to keep from killing someone every game, then just perhaps you are a lousy GM and need to let someone else do the running? Or maybe you need to try toning down your game. Or maybe you should run a few dozen APs until you get a hang for balancing fights?
In the meantime, this is a bogus argument, since nobody has said you should kill someone every game. And phrasing the argument as if someone his just a strawman argument. -10 forum points for you.
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So I'm going to be completely honest and say that I didn't take the time to read through 5 pages worth posts, some of them incredibly long. I read the first page, got the gist of the OP, and decided to respond. So if what I'm about to talk about has already come up, I apologize.
First off, I feel the OP misrepresented SKR's entire argument. He was not saying that dying should carry no penalty. He was stating that the completely arbitrary 5000g material component for a spell that was no stronger mechanically than any other 5th level spell created an environment that contributes to the "PC revolving door," or the concept that it's more efficient and downright smarter (if coldly logical) for the player whose PC has died just rolled up a new character. He argued that it devalues emotional attachment to a PC when it is a detriment to your party to raise you when they can just recruit someone new, and make some money off the deal.
Second, and more personally, I'm seeing a lot of responses that talk about making raise dead a big, quest worthy deal. Disregarding the fact that this is a magical campaign setting where people can teleport instantaneously across continents and create matter literally out of thin air, where flying lizards breath fire, acid, and all sorts of other chaos, and where actual physical manifestations of ethical and moral concepts exist, what does the player whose character died get to do while the rest of the party is on this grand quest to resurrect him/her? Do they just sit their twiddling their thumbs? Do you allow them to participate in some way in the campaign or just make them spectate?
I used to GM no rez games. I used to think that death should mean something, should be permanent. But then I remembered that it's not a competition. I'm not out to "beat" my players. I want them to have an fun, engaging story. I want them to be invested in their characters. I want them to feel like they're heroes, because they're supposed to be. Making death arbitrarily more difficult to overcome in a fantastic magical universe than anything else doesn't accomplish that. At least, not for me, and not for my players.
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Regardless of how difficult returning to life is, the goal of any death mechanic is to create a sense of risk and danger.
I don't disagree with this.
Easier rez translates to less risk and danger for a given encounter. A giant dragon in a world where any cleric of the parties level can casually restore life isn't as scary as that same dragon where the cleric better have a 5,000 gp diamond at hand. And he's even scarier in a world where returning from the dead requires a Wish spell cast in the very presence of the soul of the departed, trapped deep in the underworld.
I do disagree with this, however. At least as far as my GM experience is concerned. I GM with no 5kg component for raise dead, though you do get the negative levels. I also play with Hero Points. My players are still terrified of dying. They horde 2 points at all times to auto-stabilize. They thoroughly plan every encounter to minimize their danger. They consider retreat whenever it even looks like even a single player might die. They don't kick down doors and run in heedless of danger because raise dead is suddenly less expensive. There's the matter of escaping a conflict with a dead member's body. No body, no raise dead. There's the ever present threat of a TPK. I've never had a player shrug indifferently when their character has died and just say "No biggie, you can just rez me in town." Death still means something to my players, even with all these safeguards. Maybe my players are outliers, but that's been my experience.
"it's magic" is a cheap cop out for people who don't want to explain. recreating a body should be akin to bio engineering. in both, you are creating a body. and magic still requires something akin to a serial number of some kind, whether DNA, the Soul, or some other concept.It's not a cheap copout, it's a recognition of the basic fact that we're here to indulge in swords and sorcery fantasy, not engage in the kind of pseudo science babble that they glory in a Star Trek Next Generation episode as plot filler. Even the decorative inclusion of races like the android, and classes like the gunslinger, does not change the essential paradigm of the game which is at it's heart, heroic fantasy. Magic only follows science as long as it's convenient and then it tells science to behave and go sit in a corner somewhere until it's called for again.
If you are going to be that stickly than go to your bestiary and rip out the dragons, pegasi, and all the other entries which are....
.. way too heavy to fly with their wingspans
.. would burn themselves out from breath weapons they use
.. have an impossible diet because everything they touch turns to stone.
And that's just barely scratching the beginning of what is not just scientifically improbable but totally impossible. This is Hercules and Xena, not National Geographic.
i guess i can accept that some things are scientifically impossible and need some handwaving. i'm not looking for National Geographic, just something that sounds feasible to an Amateur. i'm not looking to impress top physicists. but since i suck so bad at analyzing things, i need to stop.
I'm so glad someone finally pointed out the downside to all these jerk GMs in this thread advocating killing a player character at least once a game...
Oh wait, not a single person has advocated this.
Perhaps, if you can't manage your games to keep from killing someone every game, then just perhaps you are a lousy GM and need to let someone else do the running? Or maybe you need to try toning down your game. Or maybe you should run a few dozen APs until you get a hang for balancing fights?
In the meantime, this is a bogus argument, since nobody has said you should kill someone every game. And phrasing the argument as if someone his just a strawman argument. -10 forum points for you.
nobody here is currently advocating killing a character per game, but people like Shallowsoul seem to be the type to engage in such activity.
If "the wizard uses magic" doesn't sound feasible enough and you need to spin up some midichlorian nonsense to replace it then you might be playing the wrong game.
If "the wizard uses magic" doesn't sound feasible enough and you need to spin up some midichlorian nonsense to replace it then you might be playing the wrong game.
i like merging Minor Sci-Fi elements into my fantasy. but that midichlorian nonsense was used to explain Magic/Psionics transperency to a friend and i guess i could learn to accept "the wizard uses magic".
I guess my problem with making death easy to come back from is purely story driven. When someone comes to you in a panic and says, "Quick! You must save Timmy! It is a matter of Life and Death!" it carries more weight, "Quick! You must save Timmy! It is a matter of Life or Timmy will be inconvenienced for one week and then he'll be fine!"
Eh, just not quite the same for some reason.
Like many I agree that an arbitrary cost in gold is not a great solution, but death does have to be significant in some way or there is no point.
If Raise Dead is equal to Plane Shift, then using Plane Shift on someone to transport them to another plane is the same as killing them. Either way it is just one 5th level spell and they are back. Same thing.
Really, what mechanical reason is there for having a death condition in the game at all? There is none. There is no game mechanic reason that death needs to be in Pathfinder. You could just have a condition called "Penalty Box" that removes a character from the game until you cast a 5th level spell called "Game On!"
Ivan Drago said it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDgcc5Sif3k
nobody here is currently advocating killing a character per game, but people like Shallowsoul seem to be the type to engage in such activity.
What was that message board admonition... oh yeah; "Don't be a jerk". Shallowsoul is arguing that death should not be a trivial, everyday event which PCs experience routinely and recover from like the common cold. He hasn't said anything about killing PCs frequently.
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Consequences are not supposed to be fun and maybe you forgot that you were playing a game that can't guarantee you will win.Consequences themselves are not fun, nor are they meant to be, but being part of the overall game is what makes the entire game, as a whole, fun.
Serious question time here, and I think the answer I get will help me understand a lot more about where all of your current threads/posts are coming from.
How do you 'win' D&D/PF? How do you 'lose'?
I have never felt that TTRPGs were games with winners and losers, ever.
I think this disconnect may explain many, many things.
I actually just recently had a long discussion with a friend that touched upon this topic. We were discussing the idea of the "Black Box/Glass Box" of game programming philosophy and how introducing unexpected rules changes subverted the goal (the Box) of the game. He came at it from a programmer's perspective, I came at it from a writer's perspective.
Long story short, the conclusion we came to was that TTRPGs, like Pathfinder, are actually two games, one inside the other:
* The "inner-box" is the glass box (goal with all rules visible) with the goal of winning combat (or other challenges) by having a mastery of the rules. The players win by conventional means, playing against the GM's world made within the Pathfinder system.
* The "outer-game" is the black box (goal with hidden rules) of having fun. GM and Players win by having fun against the Pathfinder system.
It's kind of vague and not something can can be strictly defined in programming terms, but that was the conclusion we came to. Doesn't really settle any argument but I felt it was relevant.
Using chainsaws to slice bread makes nothing but croutons.
While reading through part of this thread I thought I would answer it from the perspective of a couple of games I have run.
New characters coming back at the same level of the party can make death more of a rule reason for more loot, especially when the *new* character is just the old character with a different name.
I've experienced this including players stating "lets just jump of the cliff here and die so we can respawn in town". it was around this time I re-evaluated the threat of death to player characters.
If I had players try this, I would let them start at the same level once, but the new characters would effectively be inserted into the existing story blind, with little to no knowledge of what was happening or who was responsible, meaning they would have to go through finding out all the previously collected information again. The second time, I would say, you failed your quest, you're now level 1 adventurers living in the world that has to deal with that failure. If that isn't enough to get them to respect death, chances are I don't really want to be playing with them anyway.
On the general topic, I don't see how removing the material component would have that much effect on the game as a whole, For most people, it's already functionally impossible or a minor expense anyway; it would really only impact a couple levels of play. It's impact on the world would be minimal since almost all NPCs, even kings, would still generally be below the impacted levels, and most of the true BBEGs would be well above the affected levels. The cost of the spell by itself, along with the headaches of trying to find a willing caster capable of it, is enough that the extra cost of a 5k diamond is rarely going to be an impediment in and of itself for NPCs. For PCs, if the only impediment is a 5k diamond, death is already trivial, and removing that requirement doesn't effect either the mechanics or the roleplaying anymore than having it does; either way, it's ultimately up to the DM on how to present it.
If you want to make death less trivial, you would have to stiffen all the existing rules around death and death effects considerably; a 5k diamond being the biggest hurdle means that the underlying system is actually quite friendly to making recovering from death comparatively simple and painless.
Didn't we do this thread already?
Indeed we did, TOZ'd Salad, indeed we did.