Why high level exists, and the problems.

[The Lunatic Fringe]

Do you want to remove character death explicitly, or just provide a huge number of ways to avoid it?

[Orca]

But no one plays a game where characters die. I mean, in all the RPGs I've ever played I'd never seen a player character die a permanent death. Either the DM fudges the rules pretty blatantly or some form of resurrection is brought into play.

There are some pretty substantial differences between the way the people I know play and the way the people you know play. This is one. GM fudging and resurrection can happen but won't always.

That being said, not being able to die does not mean you automatically win the mission. If the big bad runs you through with the Deathsword and pushes you off the castle wall and into the Weeping River, the princess does die and the king will put a bounty on your head for failing instead of a handsome reward. It doesn't matter that the Silent Monks then found you washed up and unconscious somewhere downstream and nursed you back to health because the princess is dead and staying dead.

Yes, you can get mission failure even with no PC death. But you know what? A lot of people I've gamed with are more invested in their characters than any princess. A life or death battle which they barely escaped is great, but if their PCs couldn't actually die then it wasn't a life or death battle.

I mean, in just about every game I've played success was an assumption because failure always meant irrevocable player death and the end of the campaign. Even retreat was impossible because running always meant death. Counter-intuitively, removing the threat of death actually makes failure and retreat viable options, thus making any "wins" actually meaningful accomplishments.

The most memorable games I've had didn't include this assumption. There was a D&D 2e game we were in where a guy created a character who had an explicit code of honour about never backing down from a fight, or retreating, or surrendering and we all just stared. He said no good DM would give him a challenge he couldn't face so he was safe. Different assumptions.

[Quantumboost]

I thought the movie was called Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo?

You going to have to explain the Elenssar thing to me.

<insert thing here> 2: Electric Boogaloo is a common thing to describe random sequels, because it rhymes and sounds amusing.

From what I recall:

Elennsar was a user on the board here from roughly last November to April who was generally not liked at all by anyone here, due to:

• demonstrating an utter unwillingness to learn or actually concede points even when proven objectively wrong
• sending every thread he posted in on nonsensical tangents
• denying mathematically true statements
• replying to almost every single post by anyone else such that a lot of threads were actually "Elennsar, Someone Else, Elennsar, Someone Else, Elennsar..."
• insisting the board as a whole help him on his pet project which was condemned as "you're trying to do something that is outright impossible on first principles"
• generally having not a single positive contribution to any other person on this board

[shadzar]

Well then to the person who first said it towards me I offer a big FUCK YOU, to them.

The only time on any forum a downward spiral occurs in a thread with me is the retards posting towards me than the topic of the thread. I do not control other people's posting, so their deviation of topic is of their doing because they want to play some nursery school game of dogpile on someone because they have no real arguments to make.

For anyone dumb enough to think PC's should stand as invulnerable heroes...well the deserve 4th edition: Candyland in D&D form.

I stand by my previous statement.

For me, the heroic characters are the ones that earned it by thwarting death to be able to survive.

[Manxome]

The more obvious tie-in to Elensar was that he wanted his PCs to die a lot, in order to make them more "heroic."

His pet project started because there was a thread in which most people were suggesting a system where outright mission failure or death was only a significant risk in the boss fight and the other fights just sap your resources and make you more likely to lose the boss fight. Elensar wanted the PCs to be at major risk all the time.

There was a big thing where people were trying to explain to him that a 10-25% chance to die in each fight added up to a very big chance of death over the course of a campaign, and he seemed to have trouble understanding that.

There's a big difference between wanting some chance of death and wanting an enormous chance of death, of course. It's not really the same issue--that debate was about when and how much risk of losing, whereas this one is about what should happen when you lose. But there's certainly some superficial resemblance, at least.

[Orion]

In addition to all of the above, Elennsar insisted that:

he wanted RPGs to be about "heroes," meaning PCs would take countless risks and fight "with honor"

but that they should be "realistic" enough that the PCs would frequently face opposition of equal or greater strength

He then ignored the probabilistic analysis where we proved that PCs would therefore die a lot.

I compared you to him because you both make a point of insulting people who want their characters to be the protagonists of their story.

[Orca]

Just to clarify - I am not Elennsar, and I am not insisting that in the games I've played every battle with giant rats or other mooks has carried any significant chance of a loss. Not all battles need to be life or death for the PCs.

[shadzar]

I compared you to him because you both make a point of insulting people who want their characters to be the protagonists of their story.

No, I insulted someone who came in and claiming shit I didn't say. I said (in the second post) that non-dying characters may be for some, but not me. Re-read the post and follow the progression involving me.

I even said I wasn't sure if it would work as a whole idea, and commented only on the part that really meant something to me.

Funny how here, like everywhere else...people follow one nutjob that misquotes or misrepresents what was said by someone and follows the bandwagon, rather than reading the actual post itself.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Heh, watching the regulars argue with Elensar was funny -- like watching a room full of quantum physicists try to explain string theory to a barking dog.

[K]

That being said, not being able to die does not mean you automatically win the mission. If the big bad runs you through with the Deathsword and pushes you off the castle wall and into the Weeping River, the princess does die and the king will put a bounty on your head for failing instead of a handsome reward. It doesn't matter that the Silent Monks then found you washed up and unconscious somewhere downstream and nursed you back to health because the princess is dead and staying dead.

Yes, you can get mission failure even with no PC death. But you know what? A lot of people I've gamed with are more invested in their characters than any princess. A life or death battle which they barely escaped is great, but if their PCs couldn't actually die then it wasn't a life or death battle.

I mean, in just about every game I've played success was an assumption because failure always meant irrevocable player death and the end of the campaign. Even retreat was impossible because running always meant death. Counter-intuitively, removing the threat of death actually makes failure and retreat viable options, thus making any "wins" actually meaningful accomplishments.

The most memorable games I've had didn't include this assumption. There was a D&D 2e game we were in where a guy created a character who had an explicit code of honour about never backing down from a fight, or retreating, or surrendering and we all just stared. He said no good DM would give him a challenge he couldn't face so he was safe. Different assumptions.

A close battle is still dramatic whether you can die or not; permanent death just alienates players who care about their character and does nothing for people who don't care about their character.

Most people have a basic assumption that the DM will set the difficulty to a level that they can handle. I don't know about you, but I just don't care about battles I know I can win; however, I do care about battles where I know I'm outmatched and I am trying to pull crap out of my ass to win. In fact, one of the more dramatic campaigns I have been in involved a DM who decided to run one of the more infamous "killer" campaigns and hamstring us with no clerical magic outside a few pre-set items in the adventure and it involved a fair amount of planning and chicanery on our part to sqeek by with survival.

[NativeJovian]

But no one plays a game where characters die. I mean, in all the RPGs I've ever played I'd never seen a player character die a permanent death. Either the DM fudges the rules pretty blatantly or some form of resurrection is brought into play.

I've always thought that the answer to this was to make it easier for the PCs to be defeated without actually being killed. The damage conversion variant rule seems like a good method for doing this, though it doesn't quite work in otherwise-standard D&D because of the way magical healing works. That said, the idea that characters can be knocked unconscious and effectively removed from a battle without actually being permanently killed is one that appeals to me. Virtually the only way to actually kill someone in that sort of system is to TPK -- and even that doesn't have to result in character death. It's totally okay if the party wakes up hours after getting its collective ass handed to them to find that the big bad has left them alive out of contempt for their patheticness, or that the climactic fight against the orc army has been won (or lost) after they were overwhelmed and went down, or whatever.

I don't really like the idea that it's impossible to die, ever, because "you will fucking die if you do something that retarded" is pretty much a built-in assumption. If you can't die, and you KNOW you can't die, there's very little reason for you to decide to go assault Smaug on the off-chance that you manage to kill him and get his super-awesome treasure hoard.

The problem with D&D's death-and-dying rules as written is that they're simultaneously too harsh (the line between "being combat-ineffective" and "being dead" is too narrow) and too lenient (all death means at higher levels is that you have to wait 24 hours, set an arbitrary amount of gold diamonds on fire, and you're back). I'd rather see something where there's a bigger gap between failure and death and where death actually means something -- if you want to revive someone who's dead, you can, but you totally have to go to Elysium or Valhalla or wherever and find them first, which is essentially an adventure in and of itself.

[shadzar]

K, did the DM allow retreat as an option to recollect your efforts?

[Judging__Eagle]

Dying, even with no consequences, is the big "you fail" in every game.

Killing PCs, and bringing them back, will never truly feel sting-free.

For every person here who talks the talk about being okay with losing PCs, here's my question for you:

do you write backstories, and invest time in, the creation of your PCs?
do you know where you see your PCs after a good deal of advancement?
have you had such PCs permanently and irrevocably die?
were you okay with it?

Personally, I try to avoid death, and dying as much as possible, b/c I know that what I do when a character dies is never enjoyable. Usually I'll perm a character, unless there's a reason to bring my character back.

[Orion]

Why not just write death as a *mechanic* out of the game. DM fiat can still introduce a "no one could survive that" ruling if you fall into a black hole or whatever.

But in general, death should be something that happens because the player wants it, not because the dice say so. The Player should have the option to die at -10 if it makes a suitably awesome ending to his character's saga, or he's just tired of that guy, and the option to cling on indefinitely if that's what he wants.

[shadzar]

Dying, even with no consequences, is the big "you fail" in every game.

Killing PCs, and bringing them back, will never truly feel sting-free.

For every person here who talks the talk about being okay with losing PCs, here's my question for you:

do you write backstories, and invest time in, the creation of your PCs?

Yes

do you know where you see your PCs after a good deal of advancement?

On the character sheet. What do you mean where do you see them? They end up where their actions (my decisions) take them during the story.

have you had such PCs permanently and irrevocably die?

yes

were you okay with it?

yes. death is a part of life. Part of many of the backstories I create is the character leaving a poor life and taking the risk of a quicker death over a slow one, and getting a chance for a better life; or being able to live life more than just being a potato farmer's son, or whatnot. Growing cabbage's can only offer so much out of life to someone.

But in general, death should be something that happens because the player wants it, not because the dice say so.

Uhmmm...no.

You entered into the contract of allowing the dice to choose whether you live or die, once you picked them up for anything within the game. They are the random factor. Just as much as you allow them to choose the time a foe will die, they also have the power over your character to choose when it dies.

So you chose before you started playing to allow the dice that power. If you all agree beforehand on other terms, then that is a different story. But failing to set those terms then every DM should know that you choose the terms of the dice having sway over life and death.

[Draco_Argentum]

You entered into the contract of allowing the dice to choose whether you live or die, once you picked them up for anything within the game. They are the random factor. Just as much as you allow them to choose the time a foe will die, they also have the power over your character to choose when it dies.

So you chose before you started playing to allow the dice that power. If you all agree beforehand on other terms, then that is a different story. But failing to set those terms then every DM should know that you choose the terms of the dice having sway over life and death.

We're explicitly talking about changing the rules so those two paragraphs are completely irrelevant.

[Fuchs]

But in general, death should be something that happens because the player wants it, not because the dice say so. The Player should have the option to die at -10 if it makes a suitably awesome ending to his character's saga, or he's just tired of that guy, and the option to cling on indefinitely if that's what he wants.

That sums up my stance.

[hogarth]

Most people have a basic assumption that the DM will set the difficulty to a level that they can handle. I don't know about you, but I just don't care about battles I know I can win; however, I do care about battles where I know I'm outmatched and I am trying to pull crap out of my ass to win. In fact, one of the more dramatic campaigns I have been in involved a DM who decided to run one of the more infamous "killer" campaigns and hamstring us with no clerical magic outside a few pre-set items in the adventure and it involved a fair amount of planning and chicanery on our part to sqeek by with survival.

But on the other side of the coin, I played in a 2E campaign with a DM who liked tossing us in trouble over our heads. When we succeeded it was great, but after the 3rd or 4th time of hearing "In the end you were rescued by, oh, let's say...Moe." it got a little tiresome.

[souran]

Character death is a huge problem from numerous angles.

Assuming your game has a story that is actually attractive to your characters then dying in a random encounter in the forest with an ettin who owns an owlbear is terrible beyond words.

On the other hand there are a fair amount of people who are more than willing ot just play there characters through 20 only slightly interconnected dungeon crawls. Those players fear of death is about the only thing from preventing them from attempting human rag doll solutions to the vicious traps they find.

Whats more that style of game needs a way of bringing characters back to life with little fuss and mess. The more your game is mostly a game the less players want to have ressurection be a major storyline element.

The real conflict is between "believable story/world" vs. "playable game." Whats more, simply taking out any rules for easy raising from the dead doesn't actually fix the situation.

I have played in a number of games where "ressurection was off limits" however, the Game Master let us "reset" the game to right before a player did something stupid/fatal/unlucky and try again.

This solution is going to give some players total fits. The other option is to be a total hardass about it and dead is dead. This too is goign to cause some players to leave your table.

Death and dying is one of those "can't please all people all of the time" situations.

[TOZ]

But on the other side of the coin, I played in a 2E campaign with a DM who liked tossing us in trouble over our heads. When we succeeded it was great, but after the 3rd or 4th time of hearing "In the end you were rescued by, oh, let's say...Moe." it got a little tiresome.

I had much the same experience in 3.5 in a 'introductory' game someone ran at the local college for mainly new players. Almost nightly the party would be put into negatives only to be miraculously saved from death by NPCs. Often when characters should have been dead and gone. It got so ridiculous that any sense of danger was lost.

[tzor]

I really don’t know what the fuss is all about with character death. (I can understand the annoyance in 3E when character generation seemed like it took forever while you could whip out a Nth level player in 1E in less than five minutes if you wanted to.) Character death itself was never an issue for me or those in my early gaming groups; instead it was how characters died that was the issue.

Dying in the heat of an exciting battle in a manner that was clearly in accord to the heroic nature of the character, within a heart pounding combat sequence; hell those are the sessions I remember 20 years after the fact.

Then again I once played a dwarf who got raised from the dead so many times (well actually it might have been just several) that he actually converted to the Elf deity. At one point he wound up in the Elvin heavens surrounded by female elf beauties because he was the only one up there with a beard.

[RandomCasualty2]

I think if I'd ever want a rulebook to out and out say "you can't die."

Really, it's probably better having death be a real possibility to PCs that's mostly made mathematically insignificant and sustained primarily via illusionism. I think you'd get far more stupid PC actions if players believed they can't die. You need to be capable of kill PCs who act like total fools, otherwise your campaign goes from heroic fantasy to comedy rather rapidly. Of course, by no means do you ever want PC death to be common, or even uncommon. It should be very rare.

[RobbyPants]

I thought the movie was called Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo?

You going to have to explain the Elenssar thing to me.

<insert thing here> 2: Electric Boogaloo is a common thing to describe random sequels, because it rhymes and sounds amusing.

From what I recall:

Elennsar was a user on the board here from roughly last November to April who was generally not liked at all by anyone here, due to:

• demonstrating an utter unwillingness to learn or actually concede points even when proven objectively wrong
• sending every thread he posted in on nonsensical tangents
• denying mathematically true statements
• replying to almost every single post by anyone else such that a lot of threads were actually "Elennsar, Someone Else, Elennsar, Someone Else, Elennsar..."
• insisting the board as a whole help him on his pet project which was condemned as "you're trying to do something that is outright impossible on first principles"
• generally having not a single positive contribution to any other person on this board

I had that same thought a couple of days ago both do to prolific posting and general disagreements in most threads.

[violence in the media]

I had that same thought a couple of days ago both do to prolific posting and general disagreements in most threads.

You're not the only one.

[shadzar]

Most people have a basic assumption that the DM will set the difficulty to a level that they can handle. I don't know about you, but I just don't care about battles I know I can win; however, I do care about battles where I know I'm outmatched and I am trying to pull crap out of my ass to win. In fact, one of the more dramatic campaigns I have been in involved a DM who decided to run one of the more infamous "killer" campaigns and hamstring us with no clerical magic outside a few pre-set items in the adventure and it involved a fair amount of planning and chicanery on our part to sqeek by with survival.

But on the other side of the coin, I played in a 2E campaign with a DM who liked tossing us in trouble over our heads. When we succeeded it was great, but after the 3rd or 4th time of hearing "In the end you were rescued by, oh, let's say...Moe." it got a little tiresome.

That isn't a problem with death as a part of the game, that is just a bad DM.

Don't blame the game because the person running it doesn't know how to. Also the players share in that problem because they should have said something sooner in disagreement of how the fights were going, doesn't matter what game it is.