So, in another thread I've discussed some foolishness that led to 2 of the 4 PCs in my megadungeon game dying in a fight with a dragon. Follow the link for the highlight reel. Now however I'm running into a different problem.
The main reason the players decided to go after the dragon in it's lair now is because several allied ratfolk NPCs in another part of the dungeon had been threatened and attacked by the kobold minions of the dragon. If the party didn't intervene, the dragon or its minions would've slain the ratfolk. However, on a more practical note the players also realized that they were pretty behind on WBL and thought a dragon hoard might catapult them from the end of level 6 to level 7 both in level and wealth.
So now they've all leveled to 7th level. Part of the reason they were all down so much WBL was b/c they bought a scroll of Breath of Life and had to use it this past fight. Unfortunately another reason they're low on WBL is b/c I've been so stingy with loot so I padded the dragon's hoard with extra treasure from the kobold minions, a couple named kobold NPCs and such.
Anyway, how close to WBL should I stick, and how much of the cost of raising the dead should be shouldered by the PC that died? If you read through the highlights, the PC that needs raising was told NOT to move up and solo the dragon with unarmed attacks, did it anyway, and bit it. I don't know if player decisions factor into payment terms, but there you go.
I want to be a good GM and I know the wizard PC has run out of spells a couple times now b/c he hasn't had enough GP to craft a ton of scrolls or cheap wands to back himself up, but at the same time its really not MY fault that the one PC got slain by the dragon. Let me know what you folks all do for WBL in general and if you have any advice for these players specifically. Thanks!
Wealth and gear distribution is a sticky wicket at the best of times. The fairest solution seems to be to split treasure evenly, but what about when that leads to folks losing out on optimal gear, because the values weren't "even". Some common sense has to come into play. On that same note, if a player/character is responsible for hosing the party and loosing out on a big pay day, there's some responsibility there too.
However, I've read before, and agree with posters, that penalizing those who die is a short sighted way to handle wealth distribution. The penalized and under-geared party members are more likely to lag behind the rest of their team mates, and may well die again. Better to find some way to give a bonus or boon to the successful/smart players if you can. Let the Pally and the Wizard get their downtime goodies, and maybe give them a discount or some other smallish perk. Let the rogue and monk gear up too (just boost the horde value), but no extra freebies or goodies. Let the cost of their res come with onuses or debts from the temple or caster that raises them. If they're still stuck in the dungeon, maybe the story gets around to the inhabitants and damages their reputations. Or maybe they're now on the hook for some side quest.
Get them to learn the lesson, but don't let the bad decision hamstring any of your PC's. Hopefully they calm down before next session, and you all can still have fun.
PS: The car ride bit was hysterical. I've had those rides.
Well, it's up to the alive folks if it's worth their time/money to rez the guy who failed to listen to them, they can grab the dead guys loot, sell/trade what they need to in order to pay for the rez, they shouldn't shoulder the burden of getting this dummy back to life.
I mean, I realize that the player is still around, but they can leave the dead character dead and go recruit another guy from the closest town.
"You look trustworthy, want to kill a dragon with us?"
I mean, let the guy sit out a session or two (not necessarily not show up, but not get to participate in game other than to enjoy the camaraderie).. and re-roll.
As far as being even to WBL, if they are lagging behind you can dial down encounters because they don't all have the +1 sword they are expected to have, if they are above WBL then dial up the encounter. I wouldn't just throw extra/less loot at them to get them to exactly WBL.
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I've got a few relevant posts on WBL somewhere in my history but the TLDR is:
The devs themselves were lukewarm about even wanting to charge for resurrections. A big reason being "Do you really want to incentivize players to roll up new characters whenever someone dies or continue an ongoing story with the raised character?"
Adventure Paths also typically give 25% more wealth to account for consumables and raises.
My personal thoughts on WBL:
If your party isn't at WBL, ratchet the APL down one notch. Enemies with excessive wealth are CR +1 and enemies with lower wealth are CR-1 so PCs are the same.
Anything that the party can't actually leverage in combat should basically be written off. That +3 Shocking Sai is worthless if nobody can use it.
The next dude who dies and re-rolls will be able to use that +3 shocking sai....
Since you're the GM you could give them a "free" rez, as in, the cleric in town will rez them but they need XYZ from the party (kill this dude, find this item, protect the church for x amount of time, whatever) which gets the dude alive and at no down payment but they're forces into something they didn't necessarily want to do.
Or hire an UBER for the next session when you tell them that rez costs are double here because there is only one caster high enough level to do it anywhere near here and he's in high demand.
*Thelith wrote: The next dude who dies and re-rolls will be able to use that +3 shocking sai....
Since you're the GM you could give them a "free" rez, as in, the cleric in town will rez them but they need XYZ from the party (kill this dude, find this item, protect the church for x amount of time, whatever) which gets the dude alive and at no down payment but they're forces into something they didn't necessarily want to do.
Or hire an UBER for the next session when you tell them that rez costs are double here because there is only one caster high enough level to do it anywhere near here and he's in high demand.
None of that sounds really conducive to having a fun time though. Keep in mind that you're all there to have fun so strong arming your party so they can keep playing the same character and continue the same story can backfire pretty hard and slowly deteriorate the campaign. The worst case scenario being nobody is really attached to the campaign or characters anymore because they basically get curbstomped while they're already down for making any mistakes.
But players behaving recklessly needs to have consequences.
The cost of a rez is one of those consequences.
Or a side quest or whatever, or maybe not even getting a rez.
*Thelith wrote: But players behaving recklessly needs to have consequences.
The cost of a rez is one of those consequences.
Or a side quest or whatever, or maybe not even getting a rez.
I like your idea about the "free" Rez that comes with strings from the cleric. That can show consequences for foolish actions, and lead to more story opportunities.
However for the rest, I have to agree with Scavion. Yes, I'd want to see the dumb player get a penalty too. If you tie the penalty to resurrection, usable gear, or (God forbid) play time though, that ends up carrying ramifications for all of the players, not just the one who screwed up. Also have to keep in mind that we're all (presumably) adults, and one adult (even a GM) giving another an essential time out, is NOT going to go over well.
I tossed strict adherence to WBL out the window early on. I look at what the PCs have and what I feel they should have and give them that. In general I don't want 3rd level characters with +5 swords, and I think 5th level PCs should have more than a couple of potions of CLW. Sometimes PCs will get wealth beyond what the book says they should have, sometimes they lose money on an adventure.
You can remove res costs, if you wish. Raise Dead and even Wish cost nothing in BECMI. You could also have friendly higher level adventurers happen by, offer to res the idiot for a promise of later repayment (with or without interest, as you see fit), and leave. That should save some game time, not eat into the other PC's shares of the wealth, and get things moving.
Absolutely go with the “you get a cheap Restore Life, but owe the church a favour” option. That favour might then involve dealing with a threat that provides some treasure to take the party up to WBL, so getting them to the point where they can take on the dragon more successfully.
Leaving the deceased PC in debt to a powerful church / spellcaster is a nice way to penalise them in character, without penalising the player. Just as an example, in a previous campaign I had a character who was ressed by a powerful but not very nice individual, and in addition to paying off the component cost within a year had to find and kill a nobleman who had failed to pay up on a similar bargain.
This could of course lead to your party moving from being ‘a bunch of mercenaries trying to get rich’ to ‘the official brute squad of the church of (insert god here) clearing the dungeon on behalf of their patron’ with all sorts of plot ramifications.
Tangent:
I once messed up the 'penalize the dead PC' and penalized one of the survivors instead. One of the PCs was turned to a wraith and the rest were only 9th level. The survivors had to find a powerful priest to cast Resurrection. It turned out the priest they found was dedicated to an Immortal who strongly disagreed philosophically with the patron Immortal of one of the other PCs. The two Immortals like each other on a personal level but can't agree on things like emotions vs. logic or planning vs. spontaneity. So to help defray the costs of the resurrection I had the powerful priest discuss a little personal and religious philosophy with the party's cleric and got her to agree to publicly praise his Immortal should the dead PC fail to live up to a few conditions. The formerly undead PC failed, and our cute little cleric was forced to publicly proclaim the virtues of another Immortal over her own.
Atonement time.
She got back at the other cleric by seducing him and showing the power of emotions over reason. Both Immortals got back at the other by making her pregnant and saddling them with a marriage to each other. Now the couple are a fun and only slightly dysfunctional couple. At the power level they are now, domestic disputes can easily grow to religious crises, and there is a great deal of pressure on their child as to which Immortal he will end up serving. Even worse, mommy is on her way to becoming and Immortal herself and things will be even more complicated for the poor boy if she succeeds. He is seriously contemplating just choosing some other Immortal out of spite.
I usually try to stick as close to WBL as possible as far as how much loot and gold I hand out, but I also allow the PC's to make "Side Money" that I don't count towards WBL. So, if they figure out some way to make money off of a situation through pure ingenuity, then I count this as "Side Money". You thought outside the box and earned it, imo. Also, I encourage making side money via the Professions Unchained rules in this same way. As long as they set aside a couple hours each week of in-game time doing their profession, they get paid 1g per w/e their Profession check is per week.
I also allow a similar thing with Appraisal. If you get a horde of loot and 70% of it is crap you're not going to use and want to sell, I do a House Rule where the PC rolls an opposed Appraisal check vs the Merchant they're bartering with. And if they beat my roll, then they get 5% + 1% for each 1 they beat my roll by, to a maximum of 25%-- if you roll a nat 20, then it's auto 25%. So let's say the PC is trying to sell 10,000gp worth of loot for 50% of it's cost, and is trying to make 5,000gp. He beats my roll by 8, so they would get 5% + 8% = 13% more coin. They then sell the loot for 5,000gp and I count that towards WBL, and then 13% of that 5,000gp is 650gp, and that goes to "Side Money". And of course, anything from the loot stash that they decide to keep is also added to WBL. If you don't have someone with a high Appraisal, then I'll also take a Profession (Merchant) check in lieu of an Appraisal check.
It sounds complicated, but it's actually not. I keep track of the whole thing on a google spreadsheet that they all have access to and I have any loot decisions made during the week while we're not playing, and then in the start of the next sesh, I check the spreadsheet to see what they have decided to keep/sell, then we roll, and loot is done in less than 5 mins of sesh time. It's ezpz.
Also, as far as raising the dead, I also allow free Raise Deads from Clerics sometimes, especially at the lower levels. But, this turns into a plot hook for me, because now you owe the cleric 5,000gp worth of favors.
The suggestion about a "free" rez with strings attached reminds me of the ingenious way that the old West End Games Star Wars RPG balanced the smuggler having his own spaceship against the other PC templates. The character got a pretty nice ship but was also in debt for 10,000 credits (or whatever the ship was worth). The text pointed out that this drawback wasn't merely a monetary debt: the character owed the money to a powerful crime lord or other unsavory type, who might lean on the PC for favors to pay off the debt, or simply send bounty hunters to fetch him back to be made an example of. In other words, the debt was a juicy plot hook that was meant to be exploited regularly by the GM.
To bring this back to Pathfinder, make the PC's debt to the cleric more interesting that just paying back a pile of gold. Perhaps the cleric tries to use the debt as leverage to "reform" the PC's questionable ways, or just to extort the PC to do unpleasant tasks for him. Maybe the PC is haunted by portents of guilt and doom (divinely inspired or just imagined?), or simply by the persistent gossip about how their foolishness landed them in debt to a god. Maybe some of the more impressionable locals decide the PC is the "chosen one" for having been saved from death, and seek to bask in his divine grace. If the GM is fortunate, the PC (and the player) will learn that death is NOT the worst part of being resurrected, and will put more effort into avoiding incurring another such debt in the future!
I think I'm going to work out a special deal with the church; reduced cost on the rez and Restoration spells but the party has to take out a major undead. The PCs have to do a side quest so my main villain's plans get to move forward more quickly, yet their home city gets safer, they become even bigger celebs and they get to keep a lot of that new loot for crafting.
I want the u-monk player to learn a lesson though. He has boasted several times that he has Improved Grapple as a monk bonus feat; he's never used a Grapple maneuver once in the entire campaign so far. He was told to ignore the kobold minions in this past dragon fight; he used some monk power to deliver Gust of Wind to knock some of those minions prone. When he stepped to the dragon he COULD HAVE attempted to grapple, I even suggested it, he ignored me and punched it. Then on the round when the party retreated to regroup, the other players straight up yelling at him to fall back, he ignored them and flurried.
Folks, he didn't even spend a Ki point for an extra attack!
Then when HIS precious character is torn to shreds by the dragon, he's mad at me for being a "killer GM" or whatever. Now that the fight's over he's all like "everyone should pitch in equally to raise my character."
I just want this player to understand that HE screwed up. It wasn't the dice or bad luck; it wasn't me putting an impossible foe in front of them. He acted dumb and got his character killed.
Anyway, for the past few months I've been padding treasure hoards by like, 30% to 40% to make up for being stingy in the past. If they had to pay fully for this rez everyone in the party would be behind WBL by like, nearly 2k gold. Going forward I'm just going to pile on an extra 25% every time and be done with it.
If it doesn't help that you (and the other players?) say straight up that this is his fault and point out to him in detail where he went wrong, I don't know what more you can do.
Find a way to put the onus for the side quest mostly on the monk. If there's no sensible way to do that, consider sticking the monk with some kind of drawback or other story/mechanical penalty.
He gets to be fully rezed, and he gets to share in the party loot so that he's not underpowered. However, maybe he has some kind of new neurosis or psychic trauma that penalizes him for certain saves, skill checks, or maneuvers.
Maybe there is a spirit of some sort that piggy backed on his resurrection. Doesn't need to be evil, just with differing objectives that cause the monk some extra effort or grief until the spirit can be satisfied or purged.
Or maybe . . . . did the black dragon (or a relative) survive? Maybe the dragon now has a taste for the monks flesh. Or they're could just be a grudge on the part of the kobolds or some previously unknown cohort of the dragon's that fixates upon the monk.
Regardless, if the solutions to these troubles involve the monk humbling himself enough to ask for help/guidance and/or using better skills and tactics, then he might learn something.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: If it doesn't help that you (and the other players?) say straight up that this is his fault and point out to him in detail where he went wrong, I don't know what more you can do.
If I had it my way, the player running the monk would not be invited back for another game.
This player does not recognize he does anything wrong at a game table, or if it is too obvious to deny he only corrects the behavior long enough to stop being called out for it. He has never faced any real consequence for that behavior in the past and the other players in this group insist that they've just learned to "deal with it" over the years. Their way of dealing is to call each other after a game wraps and vent about this player's bad behavior.
I could go on. There are stories, ruminations and theories but the bottom line is that the monk player is just this way. I am... struggling to maintain my calm.
You have the link to the last session's highlights, I won't reiterate them here except to repeat that this guy's actions led either directly or indirectly to a near TPK. He cheated while doing them and his expectation, based on prior treatment by his fellow gamers is that there are no real, lasting consequences for those actions.
One last story, just to illustrate who this player is. Back in the early days of PF1, before there were alternate race traits, this player asked to play a half-elf. When the GM at the time agreed, this player showed up at a session with a character that also had 60' Darkvision, some Darkness ability and something else. When the GM questioned him, this guy explained he was half elf... half DROW elf.
He admitted at the table that he'd cherry picked all of the benefits from both a full elf and a full drow elf and given them to his character at level 1. This happened WAY before I joined this group and while he was told he couldn't have those racial abilities, he was otherwise allowed to continue with other table shenanigans like that this whole time.
I don't know how they've put up with this so long. I've asked them if it would be appropriate to remove him from my game but the 3 other players have asked me not to. I don't know if its a friendship thing, or maybe extortion is involved but for whatever reason when his character straight up gets himself and nearly the whole party killed... AND he complains about it... they just shrug and go "whaddaya gonna do?"
Oh my dear Denier!
You have a Dave in your group. I am soooo freakin sorry. (Apologies to any nice Daves out there . . . I also know some lovely Karens) Sadly, if you play long enough, I think everyone meets a Dave. We've all known THAT player.
I'd missed the part of him also being a straight up cheater. I'm sorry for the trouble it may cause you Mark, but I'm leaning more towards the "you need to find a new group" idea. If any of these other players that you like want to follow, groovy. I know how much it sucks to play with a selfish and problem player, and the fools who enable them though. I suppose if you're willing to always adjust your numbers on the fly to compensate for the cheating, it can work for a while, but it's miserable in the long run.
Do you have a FNGS you can get to? I'd be checking the bulletin board for looking for group posts. Or maybe start one of your own.
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