The Gaming Den

Okay, so, people have contradictory demands for how they want battles to go in D&D.

They want battles that:

A) PCs will sometimes lose.
B) Have fatal consequences for losing--monsters eating them, vampires sucking out their soul, etc.
C) Will generally let them play the same characters for the course of the campaign.
D) No resurrection.

THESE DO NOT WORK TOGETHER.

You can get rid of one of them and still have it work, but not all four.

Personally, I prefer getting rid of the No Resurrection thing. But that's just my opinion. The point is that you need to pick one of those premises and nix it. Here's what this means:

A) This is the 4E approach, where the battles (especially at paragon upwards) are so easy that you have almost no chance of losing unless the DM wants you to.
B) This is the No Monsters approach, which assumes that you will survive every battle no matter what the outcome is and you will be able to continue adventuring again at one point.
C) This is the Oldskool approach, where you frequently roll up new characters. Don't get attached to your current character too much, the DM is going to rip up your character sheet sooner or later.
D) This is the MMORPG approach. Your characters can befall all manner of ill fates but none of them are permanent.

What pussies want D?

It should just not be an easy thing to get like walking to a Magic Mart and buying Pheonix Downs.

You can have games with permanent death in them and have raise/rezz available.



Also for any RPG, my groups always rolled 2 characters to start with. One was for when the first one died, or to trade out in the game as such. Not usually brothers or something like that, or even 2 characters that knew each other, but just in case you fail to see that trap at an early level, you can keep going without taking time out of the game when the next town comes up.

It would be great to have Bob reach 1000th level with all kinds of accolades, but the journey is the bigger fun.

I always wonder where those 4 things came down as being how they are, and who started them. It is not the first time I have seen them grouped together, and as you say, you can pick 3, but not all 4.

I would never want a game without raise/rezz, but doesn't mean it has to be used all the time, or even when you might need it most will it even be readily available.

A + B + C = sounds like win to me.

As a DM I tend to run in the NO A and/or NO D mode -where most fights are easy, and/or rezzing is fairly attainable.

However in the abstract, I think I prefer the NO B model, where the villains capture the PCs so they can explain their evil plans before leaving them in a seemingly inescapable deathtrap.

Ditching C just seems like a poor move for any game where you want players to grow attached to characters or any sort of immersion or persona development to occur.

I tend to exclude A and B. Sometimes C for major battles, but I give PCs ways to cheat death most of the time.

Rarely I'll have a plot based resurrection to bring someone back, but it's not anything they can rely on.

I'm most a fan of getting rid of the paradigm that PCs can't lose fights. D&D is a tactical wargame and if players know ahead of time that they're going to win as long as they put in minimum effort it sucks the tension out of fights.

You can still have tension in fights if it doesn't mean that it's necessarily the end for a PC; you can still get a dramatic punch out of defeat if losing the fight means that the last bastion of good gets overrun by zombies or if the hero's long lost father chops off their mother's head right in front of them. But if people know ahead of time that they're going to defeat the Necromancer King and that they're GOING to stop Darth Vader from killing Padme then where's the drama?

While I'm personally most in favor of getting rid of the No Resurrection limit, a paradigm where you're expected to win the vast majority of your fights with the explicit knowledge that your characters have a random expiration date can preserve drama while still not contriving the plot or mechanics so that you can't face Tyranids. Every character has a shelf life due to RL circumstances; there are only so many times a group can meet or so many stories a character can participate before their story ends. If players realize and face up to the fact that there is some small but unavoidable chance that their character that they put 10 hours of work into might get ripped to shreds by the 3rd or 43rd encounter (or never within the lifespan of their campaign) that might work. Of course, the DM might intentionally make the first few encounters unloseable so that you don't have a player cursing having spent real time working on a concept only to not get the chance to even play it a satisfactory amount.

I don't like the idea of unlimited resurrection. It always bugs me to think that a character PC or NPC can just resurrect when they die.I avoid this most of the time by keeping a tight hold on the actual gold a party has access to and the general rarity of resurrection type magic in my campaigns.

I choose to have the outcome of any major battle my PCs run into to be dramatic while keeping minor battles easily winnable. Whether they live or die through the battle isn't as important to me as how dramatic the outcome is (one of the major reasons I dislike rocket launcher tag). If a player has spent considerable time and effort to create a character I do strive to allow that character to live long enough to become a cherished memory (by manipulating numbers behind the screen) and I always try to prevent a single roll from completely determining the fate of any one character.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm most a fan of getting rid of the paradigm that PCs can't lose fights. D&D is a tactical wargame and if players know ahead of time that they're going to win as long as they put in minimum effort it sucks the tension out of fights.

I used to pretty much let the PCs win all the time. If things weren't going well, I'd fudge things. I think it started to become obvious, and you're right: it killed the tension. Through several games, I had two players say so much to me.

TL;DR story inside:

Then, as a player, I experienced tension-killing battles and realized what a downer it was. I'd play solo characters where the DM didn't want me to die (or else the campaign would die as well), but he also had a habit of throwing me up against monsters that were tougher than me. Statistically, I should have lost more than 50% of the time, but I never did. We'd trade hits, then, when my HP got low, he'd roll an attack roll, pause, and ask me how many HP I had. Whatever I told him, I'd take less damage than that, even if it was less than the minimum damage in the monster entry. From that point on, each attack would miss until victory was mine. It sucked, and I knew I didn't have to worry about strategy or tactics. I could just wade in and beat on things because I knew I would become invincible at some arbitrary point in the fight.

So, after that point, I decided to run games tougher. I warned the players about the change up front. I wasn't out to kill the PCs, but I'd try to create tough encounters and just let the dice fall where they may. For the most part, it got pretty good reception.

So, long story short, I think having A and B in the game are important for fun. Depending on the game, I'd just ditch C or D.

shadzar wrote:What pussies want D?

I used to run a lof of Lankhmar games (although I never was a purist to the scenario). D is a basic premise of the scenario; death was a real bastard to bargain with and his "no" was often final.

I drop C when it comes to it, though the players seem to do that of their own volition so in some sense I haven't needed to make that choice for them. I've often toyed with how D gets implemented but don't act the ass with NPCs or let the consequential ones get dragged into a deadly scenario until it climatic and appropriate that they die, and so usually avoid having to make any hard decisions on that. These two recent threads have made me reconsider, or at least suck it up and finalize my opinion on D just because as a campaign conceit it deserves that attention.

My campaigns routinely feature very difficult battles against just-barely-defeatable opponents who must be handled with care and tactical acumen. I have a good sense of gauging PC capabilities and am an excellent, prescient and subtle fudger if TPKs loom. I cannot agree more as a GM with the idea that the battles need to be deadly and contain a probability of failure for them to feel significant.

However, as a player I usually take the ball and run with it in scenarios where defeat doesn't appear to be even an outside chance, and my characters quickly become the swaggering badasses that 10+ level fighters were around towns in oldskool DnD: utterly convinced of their immortality and ability to survive and thrive in what the GM considers to be terribly dangerous situations. It can be fun in its own right, but once everyone catches on then it starts to fall apart.

MGuy wrote:I don't like the idea of unlimited resurrection.

That is where you get into rezz survival and loss of CON.

tzor wrote:

shadzar wrote:What pussies want D?

I used to run a lof of Lankhmar games (although I never was a purist to the scenario). D is a basic premise of the scenario; death was a real bastard to bargain with and his "no" was often final.

I have NEVER seen a Lankhmar item outside of TSR Archive.

So basically it has Death as a character such as in Pratchett and other works?

I wold have to think about playing in a game like that, but like it for reading. The thing about needing a rezz mechanic is that without it, you have to leave out insta-death or everything becomes ToEE. I like deadly traps, save-or-dies, etc. Rezz offer the chance for the "character"[player] to learn from his actions and for character growth.

Am I understanding correctly here?

shadzar wrote:

MGuy wrote:I don't like the idea of unlimited resurrection.

That is where you get into rezz survival and loss of CON.

I actually quite liked the 2nd Ed. Resurrection Survival chance, particularly the way it went down as you got resurrected. It added a real tension to dying, it was high enough that you usually passed, but death was still something to be feared.

The roll for res. survival on a favoured character was always the most tense roll of the night!

I'm not that familiar with 2nd ed what is res. survival?

Red_Rob wrote: I actually quite liked the 2nd Ed. Resurrection Survival chance, particularly the way it went down as you got resurrected. It added a real tension to dying, it was high enough that you usually passed, but death was still something to be feared.

The roll for res. survival on a favoured character was always the most tense roll of the night!

Fuck that shit. I always cloned the disk by sector before casting Kadorto (or paying at the temple for it) and anyone who didn't is either a masochist or a moron.

Yes, what sort of crazy person would want to play a video game where you could lose!? This is why I never play the Mario games, or tetris, or ...

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Red_Rob wrote: I actually quite liked the 2nd Ed. Resurrection Survival chance, particularly the way it went down as you got resurrected. It added a real tension to dying, it was high enough that you usually passed, but death was still something to be feared.

The roll for res. survival on a favoured character was always the most tense roll of the night!

Fuck that shit. I always cloned the disk by sector before casting Kadorto (or paying at the temple for it) and anyone who didn't is either a masochist or a moron.

Someone is confusing Wizardry with D&D.

MGuy wrote:I'm not that familiar with 2nd ed what is res. survival?

In 2nd ed. and 1st ed. your constitution determines your ressurection/shcok survival percentage. Whenever you're ressurected, you must make this check or you cannot be ressurected ever again.

老子 wrote:Yes, what sort of crazy person would want to play a video game where you could lose!? This is why I never play the Mario games, or tetris, or ...

Yeah, you sure build up alot of detail to your tetris game, hundreds of hours go into it that one block can destroy!

And there's always that tense roll of the dice at the end of the mario level where you find out if you really did have enough life to make it over the fire pit and defeat the boss monster.

You know what games with final consequences have in common? No preparation. No randomizer, or at least no character building.

Maybe you want to play NetHack without saves. But you know what?

No one buys those games, despite how many people clamor for permanent death in games.

-Crissa

老子 wrote:Yes, what sort of crazy person would want to play a video game where you could lose!? This is why I never play the Mario games, or tetris, or ...

Not "can lose".

It's "not expected to win".

That's the difference.

You can ratchet up the difficulty on a game to any level you want.

Doesn't mean that anyone can play your game anymore.

If Tony Hawk was about a guy on a skateboard, and if you don't get enough points on every trick, you reset your game. Then not many people will be able to play till the end. Meaning that the game won't have lots of fans, and won't sell a lot of copies.

Look at the games that do sell well, and are very popular. FPS, MMO, RPG and RTS. Fighting games are still popular, but they're not the hevyweights anymore; people don't play in the arcade anymore, and playing a game where you can lose twice, and lose the entire game's progress is nothing but fail.

Ditching option D) is what I go for. It's just a needless threat on the PCs.

I think that resurrection shouldn't be easy but it should definitely be possible.
But it shouldn't be casting a spell. It should be marching into the underworld and rescuing your companions or tricking the god of death or blah blah. Make it a plot hook, and make it not always succeed.

This also solves the "why assassinate" problem.

Vnonymous wrote:I think that resurrection shouldn't be easy but it should definitely be possible.
But it shouldn't be casting a spell. It should be marching into the underworld and rescuing your companions or tricking the god of death or blah blah. Make it a plot hook, and make it not always succeed.

This also solves the "why assassinate" problem.

Makes for great stories. Makes for a lousy game.

If bringing someone back from the dead requires an adventure that the dead character isn't participating in, that's basically telling the player that they have to sit out a session (or more) or make a new character. Do not want.

-Username17

Someone is confusing Wizardry with D&D.

No shit, sherlock.

The point is that as a 13-year old I was so heavily invested in a videogame character that nobody else ever even saw to use an outside-the-system cheat to overcome the rez failure mechanic that the programmers had swiped from D&D. And I still say anyone who does't use such cheats is a masochist or a moron.

Now, how do you think I feel about characters that can take many hours to design the stats for and many hours more defining a personality and a story for in an interactive game with a live audience/ other participants.

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Lemme spell it out, since my prior post didn't make the point clearly enough for everyone:

I feel even more strongly that folks who don't cheat the system in such cases are so very wrong that I'm actually scared to game with them.

Furthermore, games should not have rules that only the dangerously insane even follow.

Ergo, rez failure chances should not exist.

Either allow rez or flat out ditch rez. Don't be a sadist who jerks players around - because they will respond in kind and quit caring about individual characters.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Vnonymous wrote:I think that resurrection shouldn't be easy but it should definitely be possible.
But it shouldn't be casting a spell. It should be marching into the underworld and rescuing your companions or tricking the god of death or blah blah. Make it a plot hook, and make it not always succeed.

This also solves the "why assassinate" problem.

Makes for great stories. Makes for a lousy game.

If bringing someone back from the dead requires an adventure that the dead character isn't participating in, that's basically telling the player that they have to sit out a session (or more) or make a new character. Do not want.

Not to mention, it's also a fixed adventure. So that means that at some point resurrection is unavailable, because busting into the lands of the dead is too hard. And at some point, resurrection is a cakewalk, because you're powerful enough to make Cerberus your bitch.

Generally, that's not a great idea, because it has all the flaws of common place resurrection anyway. Plus it also requires people to sit out sessions.

shadzar wrote:So basically it has Death as a character such as in Pratchett and other works?

In Lieber's world, Death was a god, with the only general exception being that he (and his sister pain) resided at the death pole of Nehwon and not on the other side where the god pole existed.

But even the gods had to obey the greater powers of Chance and Necessity. Death got burned with a lot of accounting work; his complete failure on multiple times to kill Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser is an interesting element to the general ordering of even the gods compared to the greater powers.

FrankTrollman wrote:If bringing someone back from the dead requires an adventure that the dead character isn't participating in, that's basically telling the player that they have to sit out a session (or more) or make a new character. Do not want.

Most of the groups I played with would always enjoy a session or two of being in the kibitzer's seat.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Someone is confusing Wizardry with D&D.

No shit, sherlock.

The point is that as a 13-year old I was so heavily invested in a videogame character that nobody else ever even saw to use an outside-the-system cheat to overcome the rez failure mechanic that the programmers had swiped from D&D. And I still say anyone who does't use such cheats is a masochist or a moron.

As a 13 year old I used to hold my finger in Choose-your-own adventures when i made a dicey decision. As an adult i understand that if an action has no risk, then there is no tension. As i said, the res. failure chance wasn't very high (13 Con gave you a 90% res. survival chance) but it added a certain spice to combat.

Josh_Kablack wrote:Now, how do you think I feel about characters that can take many hours to design the stats for and many hours more defining a personality and a story for in an interactive game with a live audience/ other participants.

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Lemme spell it out, since my prior post didn't make the point clearly enough for everyone:

I feel even more strongly that folks who don't cheat the system in such cases are so very wrong that I'm actually scared to game with them.

Furthermore, games should not have rules that only the dangerously insane even follow.

Ergo, rez failure chances should not exist.

Either allow rez or flat out ditch rez. Don't be a sadist who jerks players around - because they will respond in kind and quit caring about individual characters.

I'm not saying that resurrection survival is a mechanic that i feel is necessarily a good idea to implement for everyone - merely that personally i like the uncertainty it adds to the game.

And the GM isn't "jerking his players around" with res. survival. Old school DnD has several egregious examples of this (players can't make magic items, monster chatacters should be dicked around till they quit, horses are an excuse to torment the players etc.) however rolling to see if you come back to life has no GM interference. Its simply like rolling for HP or to attack - you are at the mercy of chance.

Now, i understand the majority of this board dislikes random chance in character progression - and thats fine. But i find that guaranteed resurrection takes some of the sense of danger out of the game.