The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 5:00 pm
There is no price to me, though. It's just free power. I'll take it 99% of the time. I'm not afraid to fictionally die.
And why is that a problem? It appears that you're presuming both that the amount of power is sufficiently great as to make the party unbalanced if you choose to take on this flag and the other party members don't. Getting an artifact sword also tends to make one character more powerful than another and it happens in games with a fair amount of frequency. If power is 'constrained' and you're near the top of the band and the rest of the party is toward the middle or bottom, the game is working as expected; especially if the other players can 'power up' when they feel it is warranted. If the system is designed to include the 'power up', it doesn't really seem like a problem.
Kaelik wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 6:27 pm
If some people say "+1 is too powerful." And some people say "+100 isn't powerful enough."
It is not true that if you just split the baby both sides will be happy with your well constructed compromise solution.
You got confused because you didn't understand the actual issues people are raising, and thought it was a math problem when it is conceptual.
I understand that you can't make people with mutually exclusive desires happy. It seemed that people were saying +1 isn't powerful enough and +300 is too powerful when obviously there is a place in the middle where the balance could be right. Can you help me understand who is arguing that +1 'is too powerful'? Maybe I'm blind, but I still don't see it after reading through the posts after Tussock suggested it. I fail to understand how having a defensive ability that you can turn on/off for greater combat power is
conceptually different from Reckless Strike.
Omegonthesane wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:19 pm
My issue is not that a +3 is too small, nor that a +300 is too large.
My issue is that character death being on or off the table should not be a decision that is directly tied to a dissociated mechanical bonus or penalty, no matter the size.
Thematically, can you imagine a situation where you are generally immune to death (but not severe injury) unless you enter an emotional rage where your attacks are wild and powerful but you spend less effort on defending yourself? In media we seem to see something like that fairly often. Of course, that presumes that we want to avoid death without any narrative weight. If you're playing a WWI game and you keep getting killed because of snipers or random artillery shells (real ways to die) the game might not deal with the 'dramatic parts' of going over the edge of the trench and charging the enemy. In such a game, achieving a 'Wonder Woman' style heroic moment might only be possible while your death-flag is raised. Rather than 'bigger numbers' it unlocks movement powers. Ignoring the rough terrain, reducing the amount of time that the enemies have to target you with withering machine gun fire, might be a worthwhile tactic
some of the time. It's possible to tie the bonus to narrative play, meaning it doesn't have to be strictly 'dissociated'. Just as the 'avatar state' represents a specific emotional state, so, too, could 'raising the death flag'.
Omegonthesane wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:19 pm
Character death says something about the tone of the campaign, and typically means going through the procedures of character generation. It ends up being a strictly out-of-game penalty for what amounts to a narrative decision.
I disagree. Making a new character out of game
isn't the only cost of losing a character you've been playing for a significant amount of time. Many games/characters have established relationships in the setting, and a new character, even if
mechanically equivalent won't have those established relationships. Incorporating a different backstory; different motivations and character goals have an impact on the in-game activities, too. Essentially, character death has narrative consequences - which seems fitting if you're making a narrative decision.
Omegonthesane wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:19 pm
As for your example of an opponent sneaking up and killing a party member in their sleep, even if I explicitly keep my death flag superglued to the floor, my assumption would be that they might sneak up and seriously injure a party member, possibly sabotage and/or steal our means of transit, and then run off with something important and portable that we were carrying, whether that's a plot coupon or a magic sword. So I have every incentive to make sure that doesn't happen, and changing the defeat result solution space to exclude character death
does not change that, so if I can't keep the prisoner under watch all night then of course I'm executing him.
Sure, you have lots of good reasons to kill someone. But some people find killing helpless people
distasteful. If the worst that happens is you have to go chase down a threat to recover your plot coupon (creating an adventure seed for the GM), that's not such a bad thing. Everyone agrees that
Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie in part because the 'good guys' suffer multiple setbacks. Surviving Act II to set up the PCs 'success' in Act III is supposed to be the point. Setting up a situation where the protagonist(s) can face a foe; be defeated; seek out a power-up; confront that foe again and successfully defeat it is a high-level summary of just about every literary/cinematic example of adventure stories. A potential problem with D&D is that defeat usually means character death - there is no Act 2, there is no setback, it's just PCs overcoming increasingly difficult challenges. Being certain to avoid death doesn't mean that you have to play any differently - you can still kill everyone that you want - but it does mean that you CAN play differently if you choose to and you've got 'plot armor' to avoid the most dire consequences.
Neo Phonelobster Prime wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:48 pm
If you don't understand why a specific number isn't the problem and think you can find the sweet spot of some possible number.
Why are you excluding my counter proposal of a NEGATIVE death flag modifier. It meets all your goals only better!
I mean. It probably would. If you would answer any clear coherent questions about what your goals are.
Neo Phonelobster Prime wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 2:59 am
If you want to encourage character death, lets ACTUALLY encourage character death for drama and high stakes play. When the death flag is raised characters become vulnerable to death and the only numeric changes they get in return are significant across the board penalties on all their defenses.
Better than that, lets run it in the "are they incompatible view points" mode, and your flag is raised or not based on the "type of player you are" irreversibly and forever and not by the type of player you claim you are in any given encounter.
I mean. At least it makes character death not just possible but actually more likely (I mean is this a mechanic trying to make it happen or not?). And the only players experiencing it are the hardcore edgy ok with character death ones that want to. Right?
I mean it is in the end just the death flag proposal but even better at proposed goals right?
I don't think that supports the goals of a death flag. The point of a death-flag
is not to encourage character death. Character death already exists as a consequence of every D&D edition that exists. Character death exists as a possible consequence in most other RPGs as well. Some systems even offer a chance for character death
in character creation. While I can't claim to be aware of EVERY RPG, the only one that I know of that doesn't permit character death without the player agreeing
by rule is
Coyote & Crow.
In standard D&D (any edition) characters can die and there is not much they can do about it - if someone hits you with
finger of death and you fail your save, you die. In standard
Coyote & Crow someone throws you off a barge flying at 20,000 feet and you crash into the ground, you live (unless you don't want to).
I can imagine a situation where you want to prevent character death outside of 'significant' encounters. As the GM you
could determine what counts as significant versus insignificant encounters. Going through the goblin-mine and fighting a half-dozen groups of 4-5 goblins wouldn't, but confronting the orog who rules them with his 2-orc bodyguards might. But GM fiat is never perfect - if a player is 'killable' and didn't think that the narrative stakes were 'sufficiently high', there's a chance for some hurt feelings. An encounter that is difficult (and has at least a significant probability to end in party defeat,
but not death with the 'death-flag' lowered) would be more likely to end in party victory if they gained a power-up. Giving them an activated ability to gain power that requires them to 'opt in' to potential significant negative consequences (character death). The goal is not, and should not, that players
always die when they raise their death flag. Instead the goal is to give the encounter significantly more narrative weight. Players MUST REALIZE that this is a narratively significant encounter when they put 'death on the line'. It becomes a question of whether immediate victory is more important than possible defeat and regrouping. Especially in the case of 'puzzle monsters' charging in with your death-flag raised is a poor tactical choice - you might not have a meaningful benefit
in this encounter and therefore you're dying and replacing your characters while your more cautious allies determine the threat level, confirm that they
could win and then activate the power when they realize doing so makes victory more likely.
Consider another situation - like the Man in Black you're confronted with multiple enemies with crossbows trained on you. You have at least two high-level opponents that you're unlikely to be able to defeat. You've got a vulnerable non-combat NPC that you're conducting through an escort mission. In D&D,
why would you ever surrender? Becoming helpless means that they could kill you at their leisure (and they have compelling reasons to do so since your survival remains a threat to them).
The point of a Death Flag is to incentive the PC playing the Man-in-Black to surrender (or fight it out
but not die) allowing the game to continue. In standard D&D, the death and dying rules
incentivize making each combat a fight to the death. Death Flag creates an incentive to at least be willing to accept defeat with the presumption that avoiding character death is something that's important to you. Yes, it is based on narrative conventions (Dr. Evil puts Austin Powers in a death-trap with laser-wielding sharks rather than wasting him with a .45 ACP), but it codifies those conventions to allow players more choice.
It may not be right for EVERY campaign, but I fail to see how this is automatically 'always bad'. I feel like people have a reflexive reaction to want to say that Tussock is always wrong and he suggested it - personally I think that considering options to give players more ownership of character death is generally a good thing. I understand how players might NEVER want to die, and how you might want to encourage them to consider it in some cases, and providing an incentive to make it a possibility can do that.