|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Here's another idea. Make the required gems rare. Like they should be, at that price. Suddenly you have all sorts of complications that make returning less routine:
- To get a 5000gp gem you may have to travel to a major city. Can you make it there in time before your days limit on Raise Dead runs out?
- Even then, the amount of gems may be limited. Some of them may be reserved by nobility for a rainy day. Convincing them to sell to you may require some inspired RP or a quest to build trust. After all, wouldn't the noble's rivals also like to trick him into selling his get out of death card?
- If the PCs wisely stock up on such gems themselves, they may become targets of thieves and assassins looking to "make sure they stay dead". If a gem is stolen just before a major fight, your players will be nervous...
Here's another idea. Make the required gems rare. Like they should be, at that price. Suddenly you have all sorts of complications that make returning less routine:
- To get a 5000gp gem you may have to travel to a major city. Can you make it there in time before your days limit on Raise Dead runs out?
- Even then, the amount of gems may be limited. Some of them may be reserved by nobility for a rainy day. Convincing them to sell to you may require some inspired RP or a quest to build trust. After all, wouldn't the noble's rivals also like to trick him into selling his get out of death card?
- If the PCs wisely stock up on such gems themselves, they may become targets of thieves and assassins looking to "make sure they stay dead". If a gem is stolen just before a major fight, your players will be nervous...
That idea I like, and it's so easy to implement. It's all too easy to just handwave that issue.
I was going to suggest something like how the old Wizardry RPG did it. While the low level spells work, there's a chance of turning someone to bone or ash instead of it working. As an untested example:
Make a DC 25 caster level check. On a successful check, the target is revived as normal. Failure by less than 10 indicates that the target is instead reduced to a pile of bones as the physical remains reject the soul. Failure by more than 10 indicates the body instead is reduced to a fine ash.
Using resurrection gives a +2 bonus on this check, and true resurrection gives a +4 bonus on the check. If the body is already bones, failure on the check reduces the body to ash instead.
Alternatively, if you don't want to do the bones/ash thing, just keep the check and let the negative levels be applied regardless of whether it succeeds or not.
My other suggestion would be that the spell always works... but they're never quite the same. Maybe something caught a lift back with them. Perhaps some small fear develops, or paranoia, or schizophrenia. An overwhelming compulsion to try on every pair of boots that they find, or lick every dwarf with red hair. Maybe a one-time one-round domination by an unknown force for dramatic effect.
Here's another idea. Make the required gems rare. Like they should be, at that price. Suddenly you have all sorts of complications that make returning less routine:
- To get a 5000gp gem you may have to travel to a major city. Can you make it there in time before your days limit on Raise Dead runs out?
- Even then, the amount of gems may be limited. Some of them may be reserved by nobility for a rainy day. Convincing them to sell to you may require some inspired RP or a quest to build trust. After all, wouldn't the noble's rivals also like to trick him into selling his get out of death card?
- If the PCs wisely stock up on such gems themselves, they may become targets of thieves and assassins looking to "make sure they stay dead". If a gem is stolen just before a major fight, your players will be nervous...
As I mentioned before though, this isn't an acceptable middle ground.
If you make it too hard to be resurrected, death is just effectively permanent and everyone just rolls a new character (or you tell them they can't and they quit).
I think the winner of ideas is a sort of "Greater" Geas effect that is an open ended task (that the resurrected party doesn't necessarily know) that they must accept to be resurrected with the task being decided by the being that is contacted to resurrect the individual.
It means I have to come up with a side quest. Probably something unpleasant, even if it's a good deity.
Making resurrection easy, but coming at a price in RP terms opens a lot of options for me.
Iron Kingdoms from Privateer Press handled it pretty interestingly.
All healing magic came with a pain of healing, anything from HP to debilitating injuries could occur from magical healing. Raising the dead came with a huge cost, often the sacrifice of much more gold that could be raised quickly and a EXTREMELY painful result on the healer, the target, or both.
The gods are also very choosy on who they will heal. One god adamantly refuses to heal any non-human.
One time I was running the game I implemented this style of healing, I gave the PC's a "Three Strikes" rule. The first time you were killed, you were KO'd from combat and could be healed up normally, though you would have a scar or some small mark that would be a reminder of your death.
Second time you would receive a permanent injury. Loss of limb, severe facial scarring, etc. And bringing the character to full health took time and money (and often steam powered Mechanika)
After that was as normal.
I believe this was inspired by the Star Wars d20 system of handling deaths. You get killed, but don't worry, eventually they rebellion finds you, replaces the cut off hand, and you sit in a bacta tank for a few weeks.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
In the whole "easy resurrection" argument there is most often a fundamental assumption that is totally WRONG and makes all further elucubrations pointless.
It's the fact that having money = getting the required diamond at your local grocery store.
An equation with not even a single inch of solid ground.
This is also the answer to "why isn't the murdered king resurrected the day after?". As long as the material component has insignificant cost, it's granted that characters can resupply regularly and effortlessly (unless they stay for a very long time in places where there is no access to any shop or whatnot that may allow them to resupply), but things with actual costs are a different matter.
The spells that require them do so because they tend to be more powerful than other spells of the same level, so characters need to spend extra effort and resources to get those components.
Then, going into specific case, getting a 100 gp opal may be easy, but a 5000 or 10000 gp diamond (let alone a 25000 gp one) is on a totally different scale. Diamonds are already rare on their own; more so the big diamonds with such extreme value; and more yet in a multiverse where you can bring people back from death with them. Anyone who has them would hardly sell them (which also means that those who have those diamonds probably acquired them in different ways than merely buying), and many would try to steal the diamonds from those who have them.
Getting your hands on such gems should be in itself the focus of an adventure. And when you finally get them, assuming you don't immediately burn them in a casting, you don't want to go around adventuring with them in your pockets. Along with the risk of losing them at any moment (random example: you get caught and imprisoned by someone, your possessions taken away), you'd attract all sorts of scryers, thieves, assassins and monsters.
But yeah, those who just like a hack & slash game can buy any thing they fancy from the most common of street vendors. Or even from thin air, just burning their coins.
Otherwise, yet, death IS still scary.
Pharasma hates Undead, sure, but she's also not a fan of Resurrection, as it dances the line of cheating the final embrace almost as thoroughly as a walking skeleton. Every time someone in your party is Resurrected, the normal penalties are incurred, but through the rest of the adventure, each monster the group encounters has a 10% chance of having the Advanced template, bolstered by Pharasma's spite. This chance increases by 5% for each additional time a member is resurrected.
In the whole "easy resurrection" argument there is most often a fundamental assumption that is totally WRONG and makes all further elucubrations pointless.
It's the fact that having money = getting the required diamond at your local grocery store.
An equation with not even a single inch of solid ground.This is also the answer to "why isn't the murdered king resurrected the day after?". As long as the material component has insignificant cost, it's granted that characters can resupply regularly and effortlessly (unless they stay for a very long time in places where there is no access to any shop or whatnot that may allow them to resupply), but things with actual costs are a different matter.
The spells that require them do so because they tend to be more powerful than other spells of the same level, so characters need to spend extra effort and resources to get those components.
Then, going into specific case, getting a 100 gp opal may be easy, but a 5000 or 10000 gp diamond (let alone a 25000 gp one) is on a totally different scale. Diamonds are already rare on their own; more so the big diamonds with such extreme value; and more yet in a multiverse where you can bring people back from death with them. Anyone who has them would hardly sell them (which also means that those who have those diamonds probably acquired them in different ways than merely buying), and many would try to steal the diamonds from those who have them.
Getting your hands on such gems should be in itself the focus of an adventure. And when you finally get them, assuming you don't immediately burn them in a casting, you don't want to go around adventuring with them in your pockets. Along with the risk of losing them at any moment (random example: you get caught and imprisoned by someone, your possessions taken away), you'd attract all sorts of scryers, thieves, assassins and monsters.But yeah, those who just like a hack & slash game can buy any thing they fancy from the most common of street vendors. Or even from thin air, just...
And this is still a terrible answer because then a player is forced to sit out for a long time while everyone else is adventuring to bring them back from the dead out a long and difficult journey. The player of the dead character sits and does nothing or doesn't show up or says "I'll just roll up a new character". None of those are good options. Yes, it's reasonable from a narrative sense, but bad solutions to the meta-problem.
It makes for a great compelling story, for everyone but the player of the dead character.
Pharasma hates Undead, sure, but she's also not a fan of Resurrection, as it dances the line of cheating the final embrace almost as thoroughly as a walking skeleton. Every time someone in your party is Resurrected, the normal penalties are incurred, but through the rest of the adventure, each monster the group encounters has a 10% chance of having the Advanced template, bolstered by Pharasma's spite. This chance increases by 5% for each additional time a member is resurrected.
After the first few levels I tend to apply the Advanced Template and maximize life on 100% of enemies encountered (high system mastery in my group). Beyond that fact, increasing the difficult just increasing the risk of more character death, especially without having some mechanism for the chance to be reduced.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
In the whole "easy resurrection" argument there is most often a fundamental assumption that is totally WRONG and makes all further elucubrations pointless.
It's the fact that having money = getting the required diamond at your local grocery store.
An equation with not even a single inch of solid ground.This is also the answer to "why isn't the murdered king resurrected the day after?". As long as the material component has insignificant cost, it's granted that characters can resupply regularly and effortlessly (unless they stay for a very long time in places where there is no access to any shop or whatnot that may allow them to resupply), but things with actual costs are a different matter.
The spells that require them do so because they tend to be more powerful than other spells of the same level, so characters need to spend extra effort and resources to get those components.
Then, going into specific case, getting a 100 gp opal may be easy, but a 5000 or 10000 gp diamond (let alone a 25000 gp one) is on a totally different scale. Diamonds are already rare on their own; more so the big diamonds with such extreme value; and more yet in a multiverse where you can bring people back from death with them. Anyone who has them would hardly sell them (which also means that those who have those diamonds probably acquired them in different ways than merely buying), and many would try to steal the diamonds from those who have them.
Getting your hands on such gems should be in itself the focus of an adventure. And when you finally get them, assuming you don't immediately burn them in a casting, you don't want to go around adventuring with them in your pockets. Along with the risk of losing them at any moment (random example: you get caught and imprisoned by someone, your possessions taken away), you'd attract all sorts of scryers, thieves, assassins and monsters.But yeah, those who just like a hack & slash game can buy any thing they fancy from the most common of street vendors. Or even from thin air, just...
I would not enjoy a game in which the majority of the time was spent tracking down the material components for the spells to remedy possible character deaths.
"What are we doing tonight guys?"
"We're trying to track down a diamond so that we can resurrect Dave, who died last week while the party was trying to track down a diamond to resurrect Joe who died the week before. Once we've found those two diamonds and brought Joe and Dave back from the dead, we still need to find 5 more diamonds in case any one else dies, provided no one else dies while we try to find those diamonds."
Welcome to the endless treadmill of diamond procurement, which needs to be dangerous and challenging so that death is meaningful, right? How long do you think it will be before your players wonder when they ever get to play the actual adventure in a game where death is made meaningful this way?
FWIW, in my groups, death is permanent. Aside from the occasional DM save whereby the character is returned from the brink of death by some miracle or other, dead is dead.
|
Our DM had us find an artifact ring. If you were wearing it and died, you were resurrected (naked and within 1 mile) from a tree. But...an exact copy of you was created elsewhere in the world but of opposite alignment. You knew of each other's existence but not where the other was.
It was used only once and led to great role playing and story arcs.
In the end, death sucks for everyone involved. But balance exists. You raised your fighter, but the BBEG raised his champions too. For every tool a player has, the DM has two :) Keep that in mind.
If you want to encourage team play, raising the dead might involve 'loaner levels'. The caster, and as many other willing sentients as can be found, accept 1 negative level. The deceased is returned to life with a number of negative levels = [prior level - # of people contributing to the resurrection], with a minimum of 1 negative level. The negative levels remain in place for every contributor until the newly resurrected person reaches enough XP for the next level (or reaches a target number of XP, if already level 20), or until the resuscitated character dies (again).
I'd probably put this in place of the cash cost (for raise dead/reincarnate) or reducing the cost sharply (for higher level effects).
This way, the entire party is equally disadvantaged by a character death. Not necessarily a 'good' thing but it does mean that everybody's eager to get their raised buddy back in fighting condition. And the number of NPC spellcasters willing to take a negative level of indefinite duration is likely to be way lower than the number willing to accept a large cash payment, making resurrection functionally rarer even though it's no more difficult than before in terms of spell level.
I think this really has something. I wouldn't have the negative levels last so long; even one lost every day would be a significant thing. It reminds me of how some spells used to cost the caster years off their life. I think this is a great way to bring the feel of that back.
Imagine if the local abbot has to take on several negative levels to raise a hero. And better still, it encourages the image of a room full of holy monks chanting and praying their support in the ritual, each one taking a negative level to aid their leader.
They wouldn't be too quick to do this for any shmoe that shows some coin...unless that's what their god is about.
But what if casting the spell even gave one negative level to the caster, or the 2 normally laid on the subject were instead on the caster. That would not only support the RP of stingy clergy, but it would mean a lot more for the party cleric to cast it. I think most groups would simply stay in town until all are recovered, but at least they would have the pause of down time brought about by a bad fight. It doesn't sound like much, but it means a lot compared to the status quo, where after about 10th or 11th level, it's just a matter of getting 10 minutes to rub together, and Bob is back at it.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sorry haven't read all replies (about to sleep)
In my experience losing characters is pretty devastating.
Further compounding this is if players give up their character and start new ones, you as a GM lose all the connections/stories/relationships you've worked to craft in your game world, the players also lose their investment in the world. You should never make your less invested in your world or their characters.
Personally my way of handling death is resurrection costs = character level x 500gp
Depending on your game you might want to scale this up or down. My reasoning is that it doesn't make sense a level 2 character and a level 20 character should cost the same amount to resurrect. Furthermore there's really no chance a level 2 party will have the means to save their friend. It's reasonably expensive without totally crippling the player/party.
Additionally every time a person is brought back to life they roll on a table of permanent afflictions. They basically roll a D6 which translates to part of the body and a D10 for severity of affliction. Some of these afflictions have no real impact, for example "impotence" or losing the pinky finger but they go to up losing 1 ability point at the most extreme.
The important thing was I found was this made death matter and my players actually enjoyed talking about their scars and afflictions like badges of honour.
Sorry haven't read all replies (about to sleep)
In my experience losing characters is pretty devastating.
Further compounding this is if players give up their character and start new ones, you as a GM lose all the connections/stories/relationships you've worked to craft in your game world, the players also lose their investment in the world. You should never make your less invested in your world or their characters.Personally my way of handling death is resurrection costs = character level x 500gp
Depending on your game you might want to scale this up or down. My reasoning is that it doesn't make sense a level 2 character and a level 20 character should cost the same amount to resurrect. Furthermore there's really no chance a level 2 party will have the means to save their friend. It's reasonably expensive without totally crippling the player/party.Additionally every time a person is brought back to life they roll on a table of permanent afflictions. They basically roll a D6 which translates to part of the body and a D10 for severity of affliction. Some of these afflictions have no real impact, for example "impotence" or losing the pinky finger but they go to up losing 1 ability point at the most extreme.
The important thing was I found was this made death matter and my players actually enjoyed talking about their scars and afflictions like badges of honour.
Ooh. I like this as well. I would probably reserve the afflictions for Raise Dead, although there may be more supernatural afflictions for Resurrection. True Resurrection could be above all this...or not.
I would probably do something like the following:
"To bring back your lost ones from the dead, you have to face Death herself. Stare into Pharasma's cold eternal eyes and make a deal to bring back your fallen comrade. Even powerful priests minds have shattered at the mere view of a deity. What the goddess will demand to send back your friends soul is totally unpredictable.
Some bold tongues wisper of Rea the Lonely, who after returning her lover from his early grave has been traveling the world in silence for centuries never to be united with him."
(Note I don't know if that characterisation fits into Golarion lore, since I am not very versed in it.)
Anyways one could do something similar with all kinds if entities or scenarios. Like Striking a pact with an Archdevil, who stole that soul or fishing your friends soul out of some cloud of mist.
There never has to be any real danger or penalty for the heroes, that cast a resurrection spell or the ones that get ressurected(though there can be if the GM wants too), but the lore will keep the heroes away from trying to rely on such magic. Normally the heroes will just be send on a deadly quest to pay for that spell(which is something adventurers do anyway.)
Do what the Eberron campaign setting did, get rid of any and all spells that allow the dead to be brought back to life.
Then for the rare heroic exceptions, require a massive quest to retrieve the soul of the departed. Look at greek myth, when somebody had to be retrieved from the afterlife, they didn't just go pay a priest a pile of treasure and bam it was done, no. They had to literally and physically walk through the gates of Hell, past Cerberus, adventure through the land of the dead until they found the soul, strike bargains with the lord of the dead, then find their way back home again.
Or if you want to keep the spells, make them have... side effects... Like make up a resurrection table, where they have to roll to see what happens. They could come back normally, they could come back with negative levels, they could come back with actual level loss (nothing to be restored), or they could come back twisted and wrong (forcibly add something like a Half-Zombie template), or they don't actually come back and something else gets to inhabit their body and bam, you just reincarnated a lich.
What are you, and your players, trying to get out of the experience, Claxon?
There's not a single great answer out there because every table is different.
Do you (and they) want the experience to be challenging, or simple? Is "gold = raised" a problem? Merely dissatisfying for you? For your players?
Penalties on a character after being raised can lead to a death spiral as they can't keep up with their fellow players, or the monsters you're facing.
Incredibly challenging quests, or requirements for the spell, still means that player has to sit on the sides, or not attend that session (or sessions).
But if they enjoy that kind of thing, why not? If they don't, then why make the game less enjoyable?
There are some fun ideas above, but as far as one that will satisfy what you're looking for - can't say as I don't know your group. I rather like the ones that suggest the party also suffers some sort of drain for a period of time until the raised character is "back on their feet." But then, I'm also someone who feels magic like this should be incredibly draining on the caster, as well as traumatic to the subject, to help explain why this isn't undertaken lightly.
What are you, and your players, trying to get out of the experience, Claxon?
I want death to be meaningful, but
1) I don't want to exclude a player from the table for a long time because the mission to revive them is long and difficult. This punishes the player, and encourages them to make a new character instead of playing the old
2) I want character continuity and to avoid the "revolving door of death". I don't want a new character walking in to join the party every time someone dies. It break the continuity and doesn't make sense in character. You've been adventuring for someone for months, perhaps years. They die. After a brief ceremony where you divvy up all their earthly possession between your adventuring party (instead of their next of kin...wait adventures actually have families?) you forget about them until the next guy walks into the party and you have no problem trusting them or their motives and they meld seamlessly into the party and the dead character is mostly forgotten.
Merely paying a gold cost is too simple, but many people have suggested things that would leave the resurrected character stunted compared to the others...so:
3) The raised character must maintain the same relative power level as the rest of the adventuring group. Anything that leaves the character permanently down a level, permanently disadvantage due a missing limb, etc isn't really a fair answer to me.
Which is why I agree a like a penalty to the party until the character is raised or an unspecified amount of time passes and that the character being resurrected receives a contract written into their soul which is the price of their resurrection.
Here's another idea. Make the required gems rare. Like they should be, at that price. Suddenly you have all sorts of complications that make returning less routine:
- To get a 5000gp gem you may have to travel to a major city. Can you make it there in time before your days limit on Raise Dead runs out?
- Even then, the amount of gems may be limited. Some of them may be reserved by nobility for a rainy day. Convincing them to sell to you may require some inspired RP or a quest to build trust. After all, wouldn't the noble's rivals also like to trick him into selling his get out of death card?
- If the PCs wisely stock up on such gems themselves, they may become targets of thieves and assassins looking to "make sure they stay dead". If a gem is stolen just before a major fight, your players will be nervous...
In a way, this can tie in with the quest idea: The party has a death and then finds that their emergency diamond has been stolen . . . And then gets a visit from a representative of the thieves demanding that the party do a favor fot them to get the diamond back (the representative doesn't personally have the diamond, so just beating up the representative won't work). Unlike most otherworldly powers, the thieves can be defeated by a resourceful and determined party (although it might not be obvious), and then the players can get great satisfaction out of making them taste pavement (or worse).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Here's another idea. Make the required gems rare. Like they should be, at that price. Suddenly you have all sorts of complications that make returning less routine:
- To get a 5000gp gem you may have to travel to a major city. Can you make it there in time before your days limit on Raise Dead runs out?
- Even then, the amount of gems may be limited. Some of them may be reserved by nobility for a rainy day. Convincing them to sell to you may require some inspired RP or a quest to build trust. After all, wouldn't the noble's rivals also like to trick him into selling his get out of death card?
- If the PCs wisely stock up on such gems themselves, they may become targets of thieves and assassins looking to "make sure they stay dead". If a gem is stolen just before a major fight, your players will be nervous...
In a way, this can tie in with the quest idea: The party has a death and then finds that their emergency diamond has been stolen . . . And then gets a visit from a representative of the thieves demanding that the party do a favor fot them to get the diamond back (the representative doesn't personally have the diamond, so just beating up the representative won't work). Unlike most otherworldly powers, the thieves can be defeated by a resourceful and determined party (although it might not be obvious), and then the players can get great satisfaction out of making them taste pavement (or worse).
Sadly, the other main problem's still there. Everyone else is off on an adventure, either doing the guild's bidding or doing in the guild, while the late Dame Meatshield's player has to roleplay rotting and smelling up the place, and doesn't even get the satisfaction of bashing that guild.
True enough, except that a beatdown of the Thieves' Guild doesn't necessarily have to take a long time. Alternatively, the Thieves' Guild could propose something that the party can do fairly quickly (but that has lasting repercussions) in exchange for giving back the diamond.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've been thinking about this, and it's tricky. You're basically trying to balance two things: death & consequences should be painful, but the game should still be fun, so it can't be too painful. And it should feel a bit like an individual loss, but you don't want to have one player nerfed forever compared to the others.
So what makes death scary? The thing that makes everything scary: uncertainty. Last weekend we were playing Sky Key Solution with a level 11 cleric in the party. When a PC got killed, Breath of Life. Not scary. Sacrificial victim on an altar, can we save him before the BBEG guts him and steals our mission success? Scary. (A bit.)
Raising the dead shouldn't be a predictable, routine process. That's the recurring theme of all the powerful suggestions offered so far:
- The means of raising can be uncertain (availability of gems, cleric abducted).
- Quest or future favours from caster/deity
- Random "scar" of some kind
- Backlash on caster
- Balancing event (villain revived as well) that you can't oversee the consequences of
So we need something like those things, but at the same time we need to maintain the conditions for fun;
- All players get to play
- No long-time nerfing
- Fair towards the PC who has the highest-risk job in the party
- Long-term continuity maintained
I think the best solution is to take from all the options some of the time; sometimes you need a quest, sometimes you need a harsh ritual that takes a toll, sometimes you'll have a weird balancing event.
In addition, I don't think it should be too fast; the body should get a moment to cool down. I think it's very good to have a reminder that if your PC dies, you don't get to play that PC for a while. However, you do get to play.
The solution of course is that the player plays a different character for a while. This a good time for one of the NPC allies of the party to join them on the sidequest for the thingy needed for the Raise. All those NPCs you've been contriving to keep from joining the party as an obnoxious GMPC? This is their chance. The dead PC's player gets to play one of those for a short quest, try something completely different. Or maybe this is a time for one of the Leadership Cohorts to step up their game a bit. You can even experiment with guest-PCs with a power level quite different from the party's, knowing that this is only a temporary situation.
You maintain long-term continuity, but you also impress the short-term consequences of death.
---
Aside from that, cut down on a lot of the super-sudden SoD effects. To make death meaningful, it needs to be both difficult to deal with but also not too frequent. It needs to be something you have a shot at avoiding, rather than just curing whenever it happens again and again.
My friends and I were talking about this and one of them came up with a potentially fun idea. When you are brought back from the dead a ghost/specter/undead of some kind is brought back as well. This would be someone the PC killed or wronged. When the PC slips back into the Material Plane there is a chance that someone with unfinished business is able to do the same. Obviously what ever it is would need to be scaled to the party but that is easy. There could be a percent chance that this doesn't happen or that what ever comes back is not a wronged person but helpful.
Because of the large chance the of something following people back from the dead it can be difficult to find someone willing to cast the spell.
Also because of the breach in the Boneyard a Psychopomp could be released and some of them are fun.
I though it was a fun idea. Though I like the idea of the morning penalties on the group even after the PC is brought back. I would assume it would still sit with a person who watched their friend die and then come back. Very disconcerting. And the formerly dead PC should have the penalties as well. Not big ones. Maybe some penalites to skill checks and saves for a little while.
That is a fair point. In the group I am in the penalties make sense because we are invested in each others continued existence and trust each other. We try very hard to make sure our characters are friendly and close. Those who are not are characters that end up not being fun to play with.
You're basically trying to balance two things: death & consequences should be painful, but the game should still be fun, so it can't be too painful.
This, so much this.
Bottom line is that, IMO, you can't have both.
Either death is meaningful, or it doesn't disrupt the game, you don't get to have both.
For death to be meaningful, it has to be something scary, something that you want to go well out of your way to avoid. There is no way to do that which I am aware of that doesn't penalize the player in some real way, because that is the only real way to make the player fear death.
If you don't want to penalize the player, then it becomes a revolving door of dying, paying a few gold, and popping right back up like Mario.
Personally, I like the idea of penalizing the player over having them pressing start to continue. I WANT my players to turn tail and run from a stronger enemy rather than try to fight to the death of something stupid like a treasure vault.
I agree that you can't have both. Death is either scary & meaningful, and to be avoided at all cost, with the inherent need to: sit on the sidelines as the dead character, &/or roleplay a NPC/secondary character, or you make it relatively easy to get back into the game and have fun.
It all depends on what the group and GM want to get out of it.
I've gone both ways on this because it depends on why people are playing. Some of my groups have been very serious and story-driven. Others simply want to socialize and have fun for an afternoon. Both are fine, but demand different solutions.
I don't really like the mourning penalties because it presumes way too much about the PCs' personalities or feelings about each other. Or villains who use Raise Dead to revive a puppet that hadn't outlived its usefulness yet.
The "Grieving Penalty" was a mechanical effect to motivate players, but could be flavored to represent practically any interaction they want.
You're sad your friend died.
You're glad the obnoxious paladin died so you get a little sloppy.
You don't care about the dead fighter, but watching him die has made you think about your own mortality more. You now hesitate and fear encroaches and reduces your abilities.
It can be flavored nearly any way a player wants.
Regardless, I do like you your previous post and it mimics exactly the purpose of this thread that I was trying to convey.
Would you impose a mourning penalty if the player decided not to get his dead PC raised and just brought in a new character?
If not, it's less a mourning penalty and more a raising penalty.
If so, does it apply only to the surviving party members or also to the new PC who might well never have met the dead party member? (Granted, you could impose the same -2 penalty or whatever to the new guy and call it a "getting acclimated to new companions" penalty, just to "punish" the players evenly for letting someone get killed.)
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
In which case, no one gets raised and we just bring in new characters.
Yeah, this. There's a subquestion that needs to be addressed here, I think.
"Making death scary again" -- Why did death become not-scary in the first place?
As someone who has been playing since roughly before the dawn of time, if you make death more than a minor nuisance, it's not fun -- and it's much easier simply not to allow yourself to get attached to the character, to roll up Dixie-cup style replaceable characters, and then swap them out them periodically like light bulbs.
"All right, I present to you Sir Billingsly VII, the half-brother of Sir Billingsly VI, who (as you remember) was the first cousin of Sir Billingsly V...." In Paranoia we rolled up characters in six packs for a reason....
I think the shift to Not Scary happened when the design went to "magic everywhere." In a world where magic is so prolific, the ability to Raise Dead became "can I buy it?" even though it left huge gaps in logic whenever any leader died.
In "the old days" of AD&D, Raise Dead was viewed as something special, often granted as a reward for a major quest. Which left us with the problem: What does the dead character's Player do in the meantime? There never was a satisfactory answer to that.
I think the shift to Not Scary happened when the design went to "magic everywhere." In a world where magic is so prolific, the ability to Raise Dead became "can I buy it?" even though it left huge gaps in logic whenever any leader died.
In "the old days" of AD&D, Raise Dead was viewed as something special, often granted as a reward for a major quest. Which left us with the problem: What does the dead character's Player do in the meantime? There never was a satisfactory answer to that.
In the old days, you rolled up a pile of characters and didn't bother naming them until they'd made a few levels.
We never had that problem. Our groups often made it to about 8th-ish, and then TPK. (Partly due to the imbalance of monsters you encounter at that level. There's a sweet spot in most rpg's, and 8-10/11 was often fatal in our AD&D games. If they got to 11+, they often went all the way without issue - the occasional Raise Dead needed.)
I think the shift to Not Scary happened when the design went to "magic everywhere." In a world where magic is so prolific, the ability to Raise Dead became "can I buy it?" even though it left huge gaps in logic whenever any leader died.
In "the old days" of AD&D, Raise Dead was viewed as something special, often granted as a reward for a major quest. Which left us with the problem: What does the dead character's Player do in the meantime? There never was a satisfactory answer to that.
Actually, I think the shift to Not Scary happened earlier than that, in the days of Dixie cup characters when I'd just play the brother-in-law of my old character who happened to have identical equipment. If you couldn't raise the old character, you made a new one.
... but your reason is quite correct. That was the problem them and remains the problem now. Basically, death wasn't fun then, and it will remain not-fun now until you can solve that problem.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Indeed. Continuing the last couple of posts, before we say "resurrection is dumb," or "too easy," let's look at the alternative.
If you make resurrection too difficult (or impossible), you're basically telling the player to roll up a new character for next session. In real life terms, this means you've inconvenienced the player a great deal, but haven't changed the game at all. And that's a pretty bad trade, IMHO.
As OQ ninja'd me with above, resurrection is functionally no different from rolling up a new character, except you use the old one to save time. It's exactly like in A Better Tomorrow II or Beerfest, where the character's identical twin brother shows up so the story can continue. A new character subverts the "identical twin brother" trope of resurrection at the expense of being a pain in the neck for the player IRL, but otherwise it's the exact same thing.
What makes death scary depends on the player. Maybe they find the idea of being chopped up by an axe-wielding monster inherently scary, even if they expect to be raised from the dead after. Maybe they think the possibility of losing their character is scary, even if they could get back a new character of equivalent power. Maybe they're scared of the effect on WBL for paying 5000gp for Raise Dead. Maybe they're only scared of a TPK which would kill not just the characters but the whole story. Or maybe they don't take the game seriously at all and nothing in the game would be scary to them.
If you try a solution like, "no material costs for resurrection, but 5% chance of incurable death the first time you get raised, 10% the next time, 15% the next time, and so on", you avoid the need to rewrite the story just because someone died, and you keep the fear of death (for people who find that sort of thing scary, which isn't going to be everyone), and you strongly discourage players being careless with the lives of their characters, and you avoid inconveniencing anyone... up to the point where someone rolls badly and their character is permadead. Maybe that would work?
With the ability to avoid death via Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection death is rarely permanent for members of an adventuring party and comes with little real penalty either.
Sure raise dead costs 5,000 gold and has two permanent negative levels. If you have access to Raise Dead you also have access to Restoration. Those negative levels are removed by 2 castings of Restoration and 2000 gp (and 8 days). So the price of death is 7000 gold.
But I don't like this system. I want something that makes death a bit more daunting and terrifying than just a gold sink. I also want it to be fair between martials and casters.
I've seen it suggested before that characters take a permanent (not in any way removable) penalty to con, reducing it by 1 for each death. But this penalizes melee characters more than anyone else as they are more likely to die (taking the hits all the time) and by reducing their con you make them even more likely to die.
And then there is a gold sink issue. With just gold you end up with disproportionate wealth between characters. In this game wealth is power, so I don't really care to create a wealth imbalance between characters. I also use Automatic Bonus Progression Rules to eliminate the Big Six, so it's not as bad. However the issue is still present.
What can be done to make a character death more terrifying without unfairly penalizing the characters that are more likely to die (melee).
I've thought about saying that you can only have Raised Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection used on you each 1 time. That way there is a hard limit on number of revivals. Though there is an increasing cost for each death that imbalances the wealth. Or possibly you can only be resurrected a number of times equal to your con modifier.
I've also considered maybe a method to encourage people to save others. For a party, having a party member die would impose a -1 penalty on all D20 rolls, all save DCs, and applies to all creatures control by the party (whether animal...
Martial characters are the least likely to die. The class I most often see die are rogues followed by wizard/sorcerers, then monks. I've never seen a fighter die in Pathfinder. Happened in 2nd edition with save or die spells though.
|
Random idea that struck me upon reading this thread:
Every time you die and come back, the GM picks a new flaw (with no offsetting trait) for you based on the circumstances of your death.
Killed by a fireball? Now you have the "Burned" drawback. Etc.
That way you get an annoying mechanical drawback to getting killed that's probably not going to be big enough to drive you to a new character, and it's also tied into the ongoing narrative.
Roll on a table (similar to Mordheim) to see if you lost an eye, a hand, a couple points of con, a point of charisma, acquired some kind of psychosis, etc? Heck, I've thought about doing that for being brought back from negatives.
I have seen 5 Fighters in Pathfinder. All but one died. Permanently.
Or you can use system shock and resurrection survival rolls from 1st and 2nd Ed, or have the PCs fight death as per the death card when raise dead or resurrection is cast.
Just spitballing here, but what about this two-step plan?
1) Remove all forms of dead-raising magic. It's simply not a thing.
2) Remove all the save-or-die effects (and similar) that can cause a sudden and pointless death that you would really want to reverse. That is, make it so death is a result of things going sour for longer than one or two d20 rolls.
This way, death is permanent (and therefore serious), but it's also sort of "justified" when a character does die.
This. So much this. Works great for my grittier games.
For my non-gritty games, I place an arbitrary "Rez Limit" equal to your constitution modifier at character creation on a PC. Increases later do not increase this number. IF you resurrect past this limit (which in these games is a very high possibility), you start having to deal with the System Shock table I ripped out of AD&D 2E. You have a % chance of your system being unable to handle being brought back again, modified up or down by your wisdom modifier, increasing by 10% each time you get rez'd.
Some observations and some questions:
Most of the concerns about making death meaningful appear to come from the GMs who, let's face it, do not have the same investment in a single character that a player does.
I have killed more players with HP damage than SoD effects.
My memories of 1e and 2e lethality are very different, because GM fiat was so heavily involved death was either terminal (heh!), truly irrelevant or tedious. Very little positive can be said about it.
What does this added layer of difficulty actually add to your game? for the GM? for the player? How much is it worth disrupting your core story for? Am I missing something not being worried about it?
What level do these concerns kick in? My experience is that before 4-5th level it's uneconomical to raise dead, it can financially cripple the party. At 6-10th level it is difficult to find the resources. Only at 11th level plus do raise dead effects become viable, even then the financial impact can be relevant.
I haven't GM'd much above 11th level, is there a point where it becomes truly irrelevant? (barring an Oradin with ultimate mercy - that really does make death irrelevant)