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Let's start with "playstyles vary widely".
For some groups, losing a character is more than punishment enough.
For others? They start with a bunch of backups from the very beginning.
Our group? We bring back the dead. The effort of that is enough.
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Back in D&D 3rd Edition, we used to let the PCs have different levels, due to joining the game late, missing game sessions, earning extra XP, spending XP to make magic items, or permanent level drain. A new PC replacing a dead character counted as joining the game late and would start at the lowest level in the party with the minimum XP for that level.
Pathfinder has a different philosophy and PC can never lose XP. So the party members now have all the same XP and level. The lack of a penalty for death made little difference, and that difference is that we no longer had the imbalance of lower-level PCs.
We also sometimes had a player simply retire a character and make a new one, such as a player who liked martials at low level and casters at high level, and another player who liked to trying out different classes. No penalty there, either.
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By penalising the death you conceivably make it more likely that players character will die again, and you also slightly increase the chances of the entire party dying.
When we played with XP, we tried that new characters are 1 level behind, and they eventually caught up somewhat. That was pretty rough, but the idea was that we shouldn't be character hopping all the time.
With the generous PF resurrection rules, and also playing with no XP, I don't think there is a penalty in my main group, though I haven't replaced a character outright in a long time; I just take the resurrection penalty.
My thoughts on the matter fall along
- There should be no penalty if the PC died outright - you already lose your character and to be punished more is rough
- A penalty to character swap is fine (less wealth, slightly behind other group, have a story reason to start with a negative level that needs a restoration still, etc.)
Regardless, you need to take into account the right amount of starting wealth given the module and current PC gear. Like for a wilderness AP, it could be a huge imbalance letting a new character come in with gear way better than the group because they had free reign to of the store before introducing their character. Also, handling the dead PCs gear appropriately can create challenges. The story context should be used to figure this issue out.
One of issues I have is with the statement, "think twice about doing careless action", because it is easy to see where the GM and PCs would often have different opinions on what it means.
Essentially, this is a game and the players should not necessarily feel like they are forced to play as conservatively as possible. When they do, they will stop trying fun and cool things during combat.
The more of a penalty, the more conservative they will play and eventually combat may just be another mundane thing if you aren't careful.
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I have an issue with the ''You already lose your character and to be punished more is rough'' argument.
I lose my level 6 ranger, I am going to make the exact same thing. Don't even have to change my sheet.
And this shows that play styles differ. None of my players would or have done this to replace the rare occasions of a dead character beyond practical recovery. All of my players consider a character to be more significant than that, for the last pathfinder campaign I got a novella as background for one of the pc's. I think losing the character you put that much effort into is far more than enough punishment , in fact although I never needed to do that I was prepared to fudge dice rolls to keep that character alive long enough to let them make use of that background.
Game mechanic penalties for character death have never seemed appropriate to me, they just make my job of keeping the entire group having fun more difficult. Also some of the more memorable and exciting scenes in a game are when a character takes big risks or otherwise acts recklessly because it is the right thing for that character to do even if perfect tactical analysis says it is foolish.
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I lose my level 6 ranger, I am going to make the exact same thing. Don't even have to change my sheet.
Then I wouldn't want you in my game. A character is a person, not a photocopy of a statblock.
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I have an issue with the ''You already lose your character and to be punished more is rough'' argument.
I lose my level 6 ranger, I am going to make the exact same thing. Don't even have to change my sheet.
This is a cheap move, most good players will value their character more than just to clone them.
I, personally, have only done this once. It wasn't Pathfinder but in a different published game. In that game, paladins cannot run from battle, period. Our GM purposefully set a hard fight we couldn't win and we would have to run away. Well, my character, being a paladin, didn't run and fought. The gryphon killed me outright. Me, and the rest of the players, were angry. The GM said, "You could have run away."
I said, "No, paladins don't run." I opened the book and showed him where it said that.
"He was like. Oh, sorry." He basically screwed me over and didn't care that much. So I took my character sheet, erased the name, put a new one on there and said, "It's his identical twin brother, who is also a paladin." The GM relented saying that was fair because he screwed me over.
That is the one and only time I pulled that move. I would never do that again as it puts less value on the character.
Maybe just tell your players that if they die they have to play a different build, or at the very least, a different style of the same class (an archetype or something).
Any penalty you give them should quickly go away. If they start under golded then you need to relatively soon give them more gold to catch up, this is true if they go and pay for a resurrection, the game assumes that you'll rather quickly give them more gold to make up for it and get them back at WBL. Otherwise you create a death spiral.
No penalties for my group.
Assuming the characters are high enough level Raise Dead (or other resurrection magic) is used to return the character to life (assuming the player wants to continue with the character). If the player does not the GM introduces the new character in a way that makes sense. Deceased character's items/wealth "disappear" (tithed to church, given to next of kin, etc). In the event of a resurrected character we might have them temporarily be out the amount of gold for a resurrection or have other characters "loan" them the gold which is repaid during the next outing. Basically no one is going to be mechanically out any gold but for story purposes something happens where your gold is "reduced". Whether it's owing other characters, or an NPC, or having to complete a task for said NPC in lieu of gold. Ultimately the goal is to have all players be on a mechanically even playing field.
The only problem that could really arise is if a player chronically switches characters then the GM should have a discussion with them, but don't try to fix out of game problems with in game solutions.
One way to think of a character death is as the opportunity to completely rebuild your character (including magic items). Any "death penalty" should be in line with a reasonable cost for such a rebuild.
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In over 30 years of playing RPGs, I've only done the "erase name, write in new one, it's that character's brother," thing once. That was a 3.0 game where my PC died from the very first hit in his very first combat - I literally didn't even get to take a single action with him. (1st level crits can be a heck of a thing). I felt justified because I didn't really get to play the character at all.
No penalties here.
Caveats: I use the automatic bonus progression, so character wealth isn't a big deal/wealth-by-level is pretty much ignored. I also have houserules in effect that make PC death very difficult, as I feel the death of a protagonist should be an event, emotional and with gravitas and it should MEAN something.
Yeah, no. Same level because varied character levels are a pain, and penalizing deaths just leads to a death spiral as each death makes the next more likely.
I would go with no more than a slight monetary cost, to compensate for the fact that they are reconfiguring their characters and (if they are not bringing in an identical character) trading in some magic items. The result should be a character of comparable effectiveness to the old one.
Introducing actual level discrepancies is definitely not a good idea.
The follow-on negative effects for deliberately penalizing character deaths has been said at least as well as I could. How about looking at things this way as well. You, as the GM, are at least as responsible for a character dying as the player. Have you considered that the players foolish or careless action might be because you failed to communicate the situation well? So for this he should be penalized? How about if the character in question did the "right thing" as apposed to the clever or prudent thing and died because of it. Should the player be penalized or rewarded for this?
This said, the erase name/keep playing approach damages the flavor of the game, and makes it really hard to take a player or his characters seriously. I must admit to tables I have been in victimizing such characters in silly ways. "OK, we off Bob the 23rd, sell his gear and use the money to fix the building and fund the orphanage for another couple of years. Can we get Bob the 24th in time to fund our trip to the Outer Isles?" This is only a slight exaggeration, and we ended up rebooting that game with all new characters because no one could even take their own characters seriously after all that. Bob did not return by General consensus.
Back in 1e/2e days, it was pretty common to have someone start a new character at 1st level. The XP progression was such that PCs gained a lot of ground in catching up fairly quickly and challenges were a lot flatter by comparison to editions that came later like 3e and Pathfinder.
Now, I don't think that sort of model works very well (though I think it might again in 5e) with the OGL-family of games like Pathfinder. The trade off is you don't get to organically develop the character and learn the ropes of his or her mechanics before you're tossed in with an advanced suite of abilities. Not a very big penalty, but I think there's something special about PCs played from 1st level up.
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No penalty, if someone is reckless the players can handle the one player, or maybe in character. Only one person in our group wants a penalty, but he's also the most cautious player, running away and even abandoning the group mid fight sometimes. He thinks that is NOT something that should be punished, because he's playing "smart" but I think that should be punished because it's just about as bad, it still can get everyone killed.
So no, it's just too cumbersome either way. If someone causes a problem being too cautious or too reckless then it's really more of player problem not a character problem.
however we DID start doing things like restrict the money/magic they can buy when creating the new character, otherwise it's easy to create a very overpowered character at the same level as other players.
No penalty. If your player tries the carbon copy thing, then instituting a mechanical penalty is trying to solve an out-of-game issue with in-game mechanics. That's never a good idea. Have the player come up with a more plausible reason than "never-before-mentioned twin brother shows up", or simply insist that they make someone new.
Besides, "20% less gold" doesn't really matter much since the WBL philosophy suggests that the GM would adjust wealth opportunities to make up for such deficiencies, so before too long the PC would be back at par.
I lose my level 6 ranger, I am going to make the exact same thing. Don't even have to change my sheet.
You mean like making 50 copies of a bard and when one dies, whip out another copy? That's brilliant. Then, if the party is under fire or the magic user needs time to prepare a spell, they can hide behind the pile of dead bards!
I have an issue with the ''You already lose your character and to be punished more is rough'' argument.
I lose my level 6 ranger, I am going to make the exact same thing. Don't even have to change my sheet.
Well, to each their own.
But if that's the playstyle you use... Have you considered giving each character a limited number of automatic resurrections, (re)fueled by items found along the way? If they approach it as a video game with multiple lives, you might as well go all the way.
If they run out of resurrections, they have to start over from the beginning of the quest?
Oh, great. Now I'm looking how you'd emulate Mario rules in Pathfinder...
Oh, great. Now I'm looking how you'd emulate Mario rules in Pathfinder...
The Mushroom of Enlarge Person
The Flower of FireballsThe Star of Temporary Invulnerability
I really want to run a one shot now with these items, and every gold coin is worth 1/100th of an automatic resurrection. Collect 100 gp and you get that 1 up.