I've been thinking about this lately. Recently I started my second campaign and I'm trying to run a fairly 'Hardcore' game. Meaning I've scaled down the GP the PCs get. Implementing all the currencies such as PP, GP, SP, and CP. Also my players now have weight to deal with and I'm not doing much dice fudging. My PCs are all okay with this and seem to like the harder challenge.
We've had two sessions and let's just say that without the Cleric that plays they all would have wiped. I see a PC death is going to happen sooner than later.
I've always had the rule, if your Character dies and can't/won't be revived than you may make another. But for each time you die, you take a -1 level penalty that stacks from the APL. Meaning, if everyone is level 10 and a character dies, their next character will be level 9 and so on and so forth.
Now, I've had the thought as well as my PCs did. "If I keep dying, won't I just continue to keep dying since I'll just going down in levels?"
Some PCs said simply, "Don't die then."
I want to know the opinions from you all. I think a PC death should have penalties because of 2 main reasons.
1. They shouldn't be reckless. This will give even more of a reason to cherish their lifes.
2. For those who don't want to play the class they are playing anymore so they just continue to die and cycle through classes.
What do you all think? How do you deal with your PCs death or how does your DM/GM deal with it?
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I'm a GM, and I simply let my players start a new character at the exact same level, with the same xp as everyone else, but with starting equipment bought according to WBL guidelines. My players share loot the communistic way (to each according to his needs), so some PCs have more loot than others, but most are over WBL. So the wealth-hit is the only 'punishment' we have.
We also enforce the rule that all gear (except plot-relevant quest items) on a dead PC is lost. Either sent home to relatives or sent to the grave with the PC.
Our reasoning is that the game is supposed to be fun. If you, for whatever reason, is not enjoying your current character, then switch! It shouldn't be to often, that would ruin continuity and the story, but rather retire an unwanted character than be stuck with an un-fun character. Secondly, this is a roleplaying game. Players should be expected, both in combat and out of combat, to behave as they imagine their character would. If someone wants ti play a raging berserker, who charges into battle regardless of own safety, then they shouldn't be Punished for it. Likewise, one of my players enjoy playing a coward. He'll be in the frontline untill he is down to about 2/3 of his HP, and will then retreat and spend a couple of rounds drinking healing potions. The rest of the party of course runs a greater risk of dying, so would in effect be punished for his playing style.
My preferred method for handling PC death, or rather, PC replacement, is this:
1. If the party loots the PC's corpse, I deduct that amount of treasure from future encounters. This is still useful to the party, though, as it is basically a 100% exchange rate rather than 50% (sell unwanted item). Plot items are exempt. Usually, though, the players keep it simple and don't loot the body.
2. For the new character, the player can choose to either A) start with gold equal to the wealth by level table for a character one level lower and buy anything they want, or B) start with gold equal to the wealth by level table for the correct level, but can only buy items from a list I randomly generate, plus 75% chance of non-list items.
And that's about it. Well, I also house-ruled reincarnate to change how it deals with stats, but that's out of scope for this.
I believe this sufficiently creates an incentive to play smart to stay alive, but doesn't punish death too much. I mean, a lot of deaths are just bad luck. Even good saves only save about 50% of the time (depending on the enemies, etc.).
Making characters lower level than the rest of the group just makes it harder and harder. It also puts them into the role of a zecond class player.
As for 1 deaths happen they can just be bad rolls.
2 is a player issue you need to establish a social contract with your players to establish boundaries. Additionally I've found a compelling story helps a lot. Being bob who was at the swallowtail festival and is now at the final battle to save the world is way more compelling than bob ii who was not at the feztival but just happened to be around to help save the world because bob I was stepped on by a runegiant.
I would tend to agree with the "if I die, I keep dying because my level is too low". Especially if you start without significant items & you're running a hard campaign. Considering that there is no way to compensate for the randomness of the dice rolls, I would rather not punish them for bad luck, since for prepared players, this is the most likely source of death.
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I make the character the lowest level in the party. He can be tied with another character.
A cumulative penalty seems harsh as a character's power level is a very important part of the PC. I would suggest a cumulative WBL penalty. Thus the reckless characters are punished but can still make challenge appropriate characters.
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I haven't run my home campaign in a while; my GM time has been taken up with Pathfinder Society. But when I was running, we had the following rule.
1) If your PC dies, the surviving characters would, in-world, be looking through the city for a replacement. So the other players would have to approve the basics of your new character.
"Guys I want to play a paladin."
"Dude, we're all stealthy, shady SOBs. We're not looking in Lawful Good temples for a paladin! Can you play a sneaky sort of priest?"
2) Take the current surviving party, and find the second-lowest level PC. Incoming PCs start two levels below that. But the other party members can donate experience points, at a rate of 1 point donated = 5 points received, to the character, to raise him 1 or 2 levels.
That way, if you do something stupid and get your PC killed, you'll probably come back 1 or 2 levels behind the party. (And catch up within a few adventures.) But if you chose to make the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of the other PCs, you might not lose a level at all. It's up to the other players.
This system doesn't work for everyone, but we all liked it.
In the campaigns I'm running, I have any player whose character dies (or who wants to substitute in a new character) start exactly one level behind the rest of the party, XP-wise. But from that point on, they earn XP with a 50% bonus so that they eventually catch up.
I keep track of what I call "Party XP" separately -- the XP of a theoretical character who never dies over the course of the campaign. So that way, even if every single player dies, I have a baseline. (And because I run Adventure Paths, it's important they can eventually catch up to the power level the campaign demands.)
I originally considered making it a two-level penalty, but my players are young (that is, not sophisticated tactically, and impatient!). Besides, in Pathfinder character power advances geometrically, so even a one-level gap is FELT.
This rule prevents the "I keep falling further behind" vicious cycle, while providing some incentive not to die (and to think hard before making their final decisions about their next class!).
(I also use point-buy, by the way -- in campaigns where stats are rolled, there is a danger that some players will suicide their characters until they "roll high." I have one campaign where we roll stats using the Organic Method (roll 4d6 drop the lowest in order, reroll one score and keep the higher one, and then switch two stats), but I know those players and know they won't suicide-for-stats.)
What do you all think? How do you deal with your PCs death or how does your DM/GM deal with it?
Two over-arching ideas:
1) Don't over-penalize a character death in terms of XP and wealth. Ultimately, Pathfinder is a game and games are supposed to be fun.
2) Make the death meaningful in terms of story. Pathfinder is also a story and stories are supposed to be interesting.
Some specifics:
- Don't encourage the PCs to simply loot the body and toss it into a ditch. The character was a hero and his/her life touched on many others - find a suitable way to remember them in game. If the PC helped save a village have the townspeople ask about him/her next time they're in town. The next day the party might notice a number of villagers wearing black armbands.
- I suggest setting XP so that the new PCs are half a level behind the most advanced PC. That way the survivor PCs will have a few sessions at the next level before everyone else catches up but most of the time everyone is more or less on par. If you get too heavy-handed with XP penalties you'll start seeing PCs built more to survive than to help out the party (e.g., high defense monks that can't hit worth a damn).
- A villain that steals some of the party's gold or sunders a magic weapon will be much more hated than someone who kills PCs.
As I have said on other threads, I no longer do XP and keep the party at the same level because I want everyone in the player group to feel like their character is as capable as any other player's character.
We try to have backup characters ready to jump in if a PC dies. In some cases that is temporary if the party decides to resurrect the dead character. The backup characters are leveled up when the main characters level up. I use the same technique for introducing a backup character that I do if we gain a new player in the group, which means it can be pretty contrived and implausible.
In general we do try to have backup characters that are not duplicates of the main line PCs. That means sometimes we end up with a slightly imbalanced party, but that tends to work itself out over time.
We haven't had a PC die in a while though. I think I've gotten sofft.
As I have said on other threads, I no longer do XP and keep the party at the same level because I want everyone in the player group to feel like their character is as capable as any other player's character.
We try to have backup characters ready to jump in if a PC dies. In some cases that is temporary if the party decides to resurrect the dead character. The backup characters are leveled up when the main characters level up. I use the same technique for introducing a backup character that I do if we gain a new player in the group, which means it can be pretty contrived and implausible.
In general we do try to have backup characters that are not duplicates of the main line PCs. That means sometimes we end up with a slightly imbalanced party, but that tends to work itself out over time.
We haven't had a PC die in a while though. I think I've gotten sofft.
That's actually pretty similar to what I do in my Kingmaker campaign, except that I have the players themselves roll a back-up character. First of all, that AP lends itself well to the idea of each player having a 2nd backup character who they can switch-to on occasion. But it also allows them to switch to a 2nd character who they already have some connection to, should their 1st character die.
Backup characters are created and maintained by the players in our campaigns too.
In the campaigns I'm running, I have any player whose character dies (or who wants to substitute in a new character) start exactly one level behind the rest of the party, XP-wise. But from that point on, they earn XP with a 50% bonus so that they eventually catch up.
I keep track of what I call "Party XP" separately -- the XP of a theoretical character who never dies over the course of the campaign. So that way, even if every single player dies, I have a baseline. (And because I run Adventure Paths, it's important they can eventually catch up to the power level the campaign demands.)
I originally considered making it a two-level penalty, but my players are young (that is, not sophisticated tactically, and impatient!). Besides, in Pathfinder character power advances geometrically, so even a one-level gap is FELT.
I think I like your idea the most. But perhaps with only starting gear and $.
I didn't want to penalize them too much as I know and was mentioned that sometimes you just roll bad.I think this will give enough incentive to not die or at least not be careless because there are no penalties.
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I pretty much make death a voluntary decision on the part of the player. One of D&D/PF's greatest faults, from day one, is the idea that characters are disposable. Every time I hear a player say 'well, if this guy croaks, I'll just make another' I want to vomit. Rapid PC rollover is bad for two reasons:
1. It's bad for roleplaying. Nobody's going to spend time coming up with an interesting background or personality for a character if they can't expect to play it long enough to explore it. Heck, they might not even bother with a background or personality at all. There's no attachment there.
2. It goes against the fiction the game is trying to emulate. The PCs aren't extras, they're the protagonists. Protagonists don't die unless it's integral to the story, and they usually die while accomplishing something. The death of a protagonist should be an EVENT, with drama and emotion, not just 'Well, Bob lost another one'.
hah i always have 5-6 backup characters just incase, but i never get to play them, my characters are always tough enough to take what the dm dishes out, or fast enough to run the hell away.
I pretty much make death a voluntary decision on the part of the player. One of D&D/PF's greatest faults, from day one, is the idea that characters are disposable. Every time I hear a player say 'well, if this guy croaks, I'll just make another' I want to vomit. Rapid PC rollover is bad for two reasons:
1. It's bad for roleplaying. Nobody's going to spend time coming up with an interesting background or personality for a character if they can't expect to play it long enough to explore it. Heck, they might not even bother with a background or personality at all. There's no attachment there.
2. It goes against the fiction the game is trying to emulate. The PCs aren't extras, they're the protagonists. Protagonists don't die unless it's integral to the story, and they usually die while accomplishing something. The death of a protagonist should be an EVENT, with drama and emotion, not just 'Well, Bob lost another one'.
I completely agree with you. I hate the game being viewed on a mechanical level and without any thought to backgrounds and RPing. If I wanted that I'd play WoW or something of that sort. I enjoy this game for the immersion and story. Not for:
"W00t. I got phat l0tz and now I can 1 hitz anythin'! I'm such a beast!"
"W00t. I got phat l0tz and now I can 1 hitz anythin'! I'm such a beast!"
Wait, isn't that a perfectly valid role play example?
Well, most of the time in my game when a PC dies they end up getting resurrected. Even if they're too low a level to afford it, we can usually find a way to justify it.
If they feel that their character would not want to be resurrected, then I just let them introduce a new character at the same level. PC deaths aren't all that common in my games (I've usually averaged around 2 per level 1-20 campaign arc), so it's not that disruptive.
I also allow a PC to retire and be replaced with someone new of the same level if the player is sick of their character.
Starting one level lower means contributing less and being the more likely to die again and start the whole thing again by being yet another level down.
Only if you're roleplaying a WOW junkie. :pWait, isn't that a perfectly valid role play example?
"W00t. I got phat l0tz and now I can 1 hitz anythin'! I'm such a beast!"
I'm pretty sure I've seen this dude in about half the games I've played, most of which were played before WOW was a gleam in some programmer's eye.
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I always keep the party at the same level. It's impossible for a PC to catch up in XP unless the GM gives them special treatment. Unlike levels, a wealth deficit can easily be solved in-character ("With the death of our comrade, let's take a break from our noble quest and do some mercenary work to gear up the newest member to our team!").
As for consequences of death, I have the following reasoning:
1) If the player cared about their character, the PC's death is punishment enough.
2) If the player did not care about their character, there's no reason to punish them for the death of a character they did not enjoy playing.
3) If the player is gaming your death rules, then question whether or not they belong at your table.
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Yeah, not me.
Losing a character is penalty enough.
I have them come back at APL.
Also because I am lazy, and I don't want to have to do the basic math for a mixed level party.
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I set their character sheet aflame, put the ashes in a tiny urn and present it to the player as a reminder of their failure.
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In all seriousness, my players cherish their character's lives because of the narrative arc they are trying to build in the game.
If a character dies they can pay for a ressurection or roll a new character, usually with wealth roughly equivalent to the average that the other PCs have (some games WBL ends up a little high or a little low).
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I loathe "Death Spiral" mechanics, and I don't think I'm in the minority there.
Better to just let the player get Raised or make a new dude at APL and WBL (or whatever the rest of the party's at if they're below WBL). Saves time and effort for you, makes the player happy, and doesn't skew anything. Win-win.
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We don't usually play with xp so the new PC comes back as the same level as everyone else. WBL is usually used but there may be restrictions on what can and cannot be bought depending on the campaign.
We usually come up with a flimsy excuse why the new PC joins the party and just keep going. No one wants to sit out for hours until the party gets to meet up with the new PC.
Depends on the context of the game I am playing.
If I am playing survival horror or political intrigue/espionage (often included PvP) the PC stays dead and a new one is brought it.
If we are playing fantasy I leave it up to the player. The same character can come back (maybe they never even died) on terms the player selects. Just as an example the wizard hit -18 HP a month ago which would have been death but the player decided he would rather be alive, so the PLAYER decided that he would roll a d4 and lose a limb but be stable. He ended up losing his right leg from the thigh down. He now has a shiny new clockwork leg. Much more interesting then a rez.
While some do not care for a "death spiral" mechanic, I think that savvy players should play their new lesser character as a squishy. I.e. don't take chances until they level up. You don't need to be up in the face of your opponents all the time, and you can also back off. The others should also help protect the squishier PC as a teamwork effort. Part of roleplay is learning to cooperate. Protecting the new character can be part of that. This does not work if the players don't want to be a team, but if they want to, it can go great.
/cevah
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My preferred style is fantasy Vietnam so I for one appreciate that the designers left in rules for death. Sorry if that's badwrongfun.
The idea death penalties being necessary though is a strange one for me. I have never had a player suicide their PC in order to play something else. Not sure where the idea came from that the character you currently have must die before moving on. If one of my players is tired of their character they just say so. We work in a way for them to create a new one. I can understand that being abused at some tables so it is sort of making sense to me now.
I always decided to do it one of two ways:
A) is when it doesn't fit the plot, when characters are deep somewhere and remote, and the likelihood of someone just happening by is low.
B) Is when you can find a setting reason or plot point for why a character is coming in. If you are in Riddle Port and a Paladin followed the party to Devil's Elbow to convince them to let him use the Golden Goblin as a staging area then the Paladin would be believable. If you are in the Darklands and a drow Warrior/Wizard who is a separatist with the drow societies at large, then that is a little believable.
A) You start one level behind, but gain 200% experience until the level after next or you catch up with the party. This is a penalty to the group for allowing you to die, and not taking risks to save you. You gain the Advanced Template to equalize, but gain it when you level up.
~~~If you commit suicide you do not gain the 200%, and you gain NPC gold instead of heroic gold. At your next level you gain XP to make you equal with the other PCs, you also lose all your gear and gain starting gold of the level you are now at.
Penalties, and bonuses for dying/suicide stack. If someone commits suicide 4 times at level 5 then they will go to level 4/3/2/1, but if someone dies normally 4 times at level 5 then the XP bonus goes to 200/400/600/800% as well as advanced template 1/2/3/4 times, and at 800% that tends to mean you survive a single encounter and level up.
B) If everyone is the same level and you die then you just bring in another character, but you start at starting XP for that level. You gain 200% xp until you catch up with the person with the highest XP.
I've been thinking about this lately. Recently I started my second campaign and I'm trying to run a fairly 'Hardcore' game. Meaning I've scaled down the GP the PCs get. Implementing all the currencies such as PP, GP, SP, and CP. Also my players now have weight to deal with and I'm not doing much dice fudging. My PCs are all okay with this and seem to like the harder challenge.
We've had two sessions and let's just say that without the Cleric that plays they all would have wiped. I see a PC death is going to happen sooner than later.
I've always had the rule, if your Character dies and can't/won't be revived than you may make another. But for each time you die, you take a -1 level penalty that stacks from the APL. Meaning, if everyone is level 10 and a character dies, their next character will be level 9 and so on and so forth.
Now, I've had the thought as well as my PCs did. "If I keep dying, won't I just continue to keep dying since I'll just going down in levels?"
Some PCs said simply, "Don't die then."
I want to know the opinions from you all. I think a PC death should have penalties because of 2 main reasons.
1. They shouldn't be reckless. This will give even more of a reason to cherish their lifes.
2. For those who don't want to play the class they are playing anymore so they just continue to die and cycle through classes.What do you all think? How do you deal with your PCs death or how does your DM/GM deal with it?
1. If your players are reckless it might be due to a lack of skill instead of being reckless. If they can do better, but just won't then they might not care about the characters, and will just start with a brand new level X character anyway.
2. They should just be allowed to retire the character instead of "suicide" it. If they do that at a bad time it could lead to other PC's dying due to the lack of help.
Having them continually fall behind is not really a good thing IMO. They still need the gold to come back to live and get their levels back by the rules, and it is not cheap to get that done.
What you can do is roll a d100 to see if they get to come back. <---Maybe resurrection magic is not stable. I would run it by the group though. :)
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I played in a long term Kingmaker campaign recently, and the cautious rogue survived. He ended up being a level or two ahead of everyone else by about 8th.
The rest of us lost priests, warriors and mages, losing about half a level each time as we came back half way between the lowest level of xp of the current party and the next. It did become a vicious circle especially for the fighters that were going toe to toe. Also if the warrior dies then usually the party will hint strongly that another one is what they need.
I like the idea of increasing the rate of xp gained to gradually bring everyone back into line however that may cause problems of wealth per level in time.
Also only keeping the consumables is a good thought since they were often bought with group funds anyway.
But the bottom line for me is that there has to be some sort of penalty to make death something to fear for your character. And letting new PCs choose their gear can mean they are better, more appropriately equipped than the long standing party members. Not such an issue in Kingmaker but it would be for some other campaigns.
Finally the worst part of character death I find, especially in a long term campaign like Temple of Elemental Evil, is the lack of continuity, vital knowledge can slip through the gaps and the party feels less connected. I know this is not what this thread is about but maybe there is some way of transferring that knowledge too. Not sure how though.
Cheers
Finally the worst part of character death I find, especially in a long term campaign like Temple of Elemental Evil, is the lack of continuity, vital knowledge can slip through the gaps and the party feels less connected.
I was playing in a campaign once where we had four players. My character died one session, and then in the next session two of the other PCs died. When they made up new characters and joined in the game, we were down to a single original character.
There was a long period after that where the game was a little weird because most of the PCs had very little tie to the campaign world or the group's history.
One extra system I use is the introduction of Bondfires and artifacts called Humanity that, in essence, give PCs free revivals with conditions. It is a VERY meta-game system, but one that my PCs often liked. It is like imperfect hero points.
How it works:
The Humanity artifact is a slotless item that curses the holder to live forever in a state of endless death until he his maximum age or dies without having offered souls to the artifact. When the wielder of a Humanity dies his corpse melts into the humanity in a bright flash of ultra-violet light and he is teleported to the last bondfire he rested at.
Bondfires are spread throughout the world, and are often times conveniently placed within view of a dungeon entrance. When the wielder of a Humanity artifact dies, he is teleported and revived at a Bondfire. However, he loses a large portion of what makes him who he is, and he feels like an empty shell. The only ways to regain one's humanity are to Level up, or to kill a creature or group of creatures to form an Epic Encounter (APL+3). Do this and your spirit is restored as the life essence of the encounter is trapped within the humanity.
So in other words, you have to defeat the boss encounter of the dungeon, or one of the mini-boss encounters. You CAN artificially create a boss encounter by drawing multiple encounters together, but it might end up being larger than CR(APL+3), and if that is the case then you might just die again.
Penalties:
Dying grants a negative level if the Humanity artifact is full.
Dying grants two negative levels if the Humanity artifact is not full.
When the character's negative levels meets or exceeds his Hit Dice he becomes hollow, and becomes a wight.
If the wielder is level 1 it treats the revival as a raise dead, and bestows the -2 con per negative level.
The Humanity artifact abandons wights, and if it is abandoned--Intentionally left behind, not accidentally--it breaks its connection with its wielder and teleports into the care of someone else.
Unlike normal negative levels, these cannot be removed by any means aside from giving the Humanity what it wants. If Raise Dead is cast it removes one negative level.
I played in a long term Kingmaker campaign recently, and the cautious rogue survived. He ended up being a level or two ahead of everyone else by about 8th.
The rest of us lost priests, warriors and mages, losing about half a level each time as we came back half way between the lowest level of xp of the current party and the next. It did become a vicious circle especially for the fighters that were going toe to toe. Also if the warrior dies then usually the party will hint strongly that another one is what they need.
I like the idea of increasing the rate of xp gained to gradually bring everyone back into line however that may cause problems of wealth per level in time.
Also only keeping the consumables is a good thought since they were often bought with group funds anyway.
But the bottom line for me is that there has to be some sort of penalty to make death something to fear for your character. And letting new PCs choose their gear can mean they are better, more appropriately equipped than the long standing party members. Not such an issue in Kingmaker but it would be for some other campaigns.
Finally the worst part of character death I find, especially in a long term campaign like Temple of Elemental Evil, is the lack of continuity, vital knowledge can slip through the gaps and the party feels less connected. I know this is not what this thread is about but maybe there is some way of transferring that knowledge too. Not sure how though.
Cheers
Just say the party keeps a journal, and any new members get to read it. :)
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That is an elegant solution for the most part, wraithstrike. But the irritation is when the party meets someone and they cannot remember who has met them before.
The whole encounter suddenly stops being roleplay and everyone realises they are sat round a table. Humming and harring as each person says things like,"what is Farrouk that met this merchant? And you were playing Nolongaliv when we passed through this town last time." Not many DMs keep those sorts of records in my experience. Its just an irritation though.
Personally the loss of a well developed character is much worse than the time spent making a replacement. I look on that as an opportunity.
Maybe as I get older I'll get softer too about penalizing players who lose characters. Also I'd prefer someone to retire a PC if they are a bit bored and fancy trying something else. Not that all deaths are due to boredom, most aren't.
Cheers