Yeah. Sizing control of the character like that minus a magical or supernatural effect is kinda a BIG nono.
That end is awful Mikaze, being told for your char, something is funny that they would not ever, ever laugh at.
Close to, your mother was killed by orcs, in front of you, but that bard was really funny, so you have a good laugh about it.
Urgh.
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Simulationist: It makes no sense not to pick up the gear your dead companion carried. Some one will pick the stuff up and it would clearly benefit the team rather than leaving it for some NPC or monster to grab.
Gamist: Loot MUST remain balanced. So the stuff just vanishes(or is ignored in some way) when they die.
Narrativist: Doesn't he have a family? We should use what he would have wanted us to use and donate the rest to his family. His feelings and theirs are paramount in this time of loss.
Gamist: His loot could be helpful to our survival and it's not like his feelings matter because he's a fake person, take the loot.
FTFY.
"Gamist" is not necessarily focused on "absolute perfect balance" and certainly not correcting such miniscule imbalances as one guy's loot split among 3-4 (or more) other people.
Actually Gamists usually are concerned with balanced encounters.
Keep in mind distributing one persons WBL will bump the other 3 guys up more than an item crafting feat would, and you have seen the huge outrage over allowing that much of a bump in WBL. This drops with larger teams but even if you had a big group of 6 PCs the resulting 20% boost to WBL for the survivors is almost as big as the 25% one item crafting feat is supposed to net you. This only gets worse and worse as more people die. Trust me Gamists don't pick that stuff up.
Actually Gamists usually are concerned with balanced encounters.
Keep in mind distributing one persons WBL will bump the other 3 guys up more than an item crafting feat would, and you have seen the huge outrage over allowing that much of a bump in WBL. This drops with larger teams but even if you had a big group of 6 PCs the resulting 20% boost to WBL for the survivors is almost as big as the 25% one item crafting feat is supposed to net you. This only gets worse and worse as more people die. Trust me Gamists don't pick that stuff up.
Gamist GMs are concerned with balanced encounters. Gamist players are looking for every possible advantage they can get.
Ok... Ivan has a good point. But you can't avoid the influence a gamist GM will have over his group.
The difference is that while Item Crafting gives you a pick and choose of what items are wanted, looting a player's corpse does not. You may find 1 or 2 items of real value to someone else in the group, and the rest just be junk you sell for a pittance at the next town.
Think of it this way: Well-geared boss characters don't bump the party's power by any appreciable amount, why would a PC corpse do so?
The difference is that while Item Crafting gives you a pick and choose of what items are wanted, looting a player's corpse does not. You may find 1 or 2 items of real value to someone else in the group, and the rest just be junk you sell for a pittance at the next town.
Think of it this way: Well-geared boss characters don't bump the party's power by any appreciable amount, why would a PC corpse do so?
it wouldn't.
you would have to Suicide 15 or more 13th level PCs to really beef up a single 13th level PC. meaning, a 13th level party of 4, would require 60 13th level PCs suiciding before the power becomes truly appreciable. in a low magic game, these numbers quadruple to 60 and 240 respectively.
and that only applies if you are allowed to blow the entirety of your wealth on one uber item.
blowing through 240, let alone 60 or 15 blank character sheets is just not an option.
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Not to be picky, but when the player rage quit the game didn't the character go from PC to NPC?
So it is not the players looting a dead player, it is PCs looting a dead NPC. ;-)
*Kicks the corpse*
There is no PC in this body.
I do whatever I can to keep my fellow players PC's alive but if they don't make it we divide up their gear and carry on... Or send it to their PC widow... Or toss it into the volcano. In short we treat it as party treasure. The player has no say in what happens to his gear after his character dies unless the party has the money and inclination to resurrect him (and maybe not even then). If a player is bringing in a new character they normally don't even get a split. They weren't part of the party when the treasure was gained.
That makes sense.
The difference is that while Item Crafting gives you a pick and choose of what items are wanted, looting a player's corpse does not. You may find 1 or 2 items of real value to someone else in the group, and the rest just be junk you sell for a pittance at the next town.
Think of it this way: Well-geared boss characters don't bump the party's power by any appreciable amount, why would a PC corpse do so?
it wouldn't.
you would have to Suicide 15 or more 13th level PCs to really beef up a single 13th level PC. meaning, a 13th level party of 4, would require 60 13th level PCs suiciding before the power becomes truly appreciable. in a low magic game, these numbers quadruple to 60 and 240 respectively.
and that only applies if you are allowed to blow the entirety of your wealth on one uber item.
blowing through 240, let alone 60 or 15 blank character sheets is just not an option.
How on earth did you make up those numbers out of curiosity?
In every game I have played... except one extremely low magic one, the PCs usually have more wealth than the WBL table allots. If one of the five dies the others now have 25% greater wealth, while the dead guy has far below that amount on restart. Sure if the survivors don't find anything they want in the dead guys stash they can still cash in for gear they do want and still end up 12.5% higher than their already higher than WBL status. The poorly equipped guy has a greater chance of dying in the remainder of the adventure. So in the worst case scenario it only takes 2 PC deaths to exactly equal an item crafting feat for free in WBL. That isn't nothing... gamists have a valid point about balance.
Not to be picky, but when the player rage quit the game didn't the character go from PC to NPC?
So it is not the players looting a dead player, it is PCs looting a dead NPC. ;-)
In my opinion, the bigger factor in this is that the player quit the game. Rage quit, at that. At that point, they forfeit their character(unless they took their sheet with them or something). It's really up to the DM to decide, but this character is, at most, a npc now.
Had the player stayed, then we'd be in a more normal situation(character dies, what do we do with the gear?). Being that the player left, all bets are off.
Like several people suggested upthread; if the DM is concerned about WBL, just ease off some treasure for a while until things balance back out.
About suiciding characters: If your players are so uninterested in building their own characters that they want to kill 'em off for some easy loot, and you're letting them do it, you've got bigger problems than imbalance. Forcing everyone to start several levels behind for that reason just makes the players feel like you don't trust them--and they'd be right.
About the morale check: The difference between making a save vs. Frightful Presence and making a save vs. a friend's death is that one is about an external fear effect and the other is the GM deciding your character is scared. One is your character failing to resist and one is the GM deciding, "Okay, your character pees his pants and runs because that's how he handles death."
How a PC grieves should never be decided by a dice roll.
About the main topic: We had a main topic? Oh, right. I second everyone else--if you're worried, just reduce loot for a little while.