How to Implement Save or Dies in a Balanced D&D System

[Thaluikhain]

D&D is a cooperative game. If being dead means you can't participate in the game for some number of real-life hours or multiple real-life sessions that's not ideal. If death is a temporary, easily removed condition (like hit point loss is in standard D&D), I don't think that gives death the seriousness that it deserves. For what it's worth, we don't have any [real] way to bring a dead character back to life. We also don't have to have 'super-dead' like 'disintegrated' or 'eradicated'.

Saying 'death can happen but it is super-easy to remove' is virtually the same as saying 'death can't happen', but it is the worst version of that to my personal taste.

Just throwing this out there, but what about dying means you are stuck playing the low level hireling tagging along for the rest of the session? You can still contribute, but you are at a significant handicap until you get a new character or whatever.

(As an aside, in GW's LotR/Hobbit/Middle Earth strategy game, characters get fate points which give you a 4+ save against taking a wound, once each. You don't have to use your save and can elect to take a wound, but excepting worrying about the rare wounds that come with insta-kill effects or something, I don't see why you would)

[deaddmwalking]

Just throwing this out there, but what about dying means you are stuck playing the low level hireling tagging along for the rest of the session? You can still contribute, but you are at a significant handicap until you get a new character or whatever.

I'm not sure what you mean. Nothing says you're stuck playing any character. If the party is 4 PCs and no hirelings or henchmen, you may not have any options to play ANY character until the party has time to recruit someone. Inside the dungeon, introducing a NEW character is often easier than reviving a dead character (the goblins have a prison-cave, or whatever).

Without a character, you can 'contribute' by suggesting actions for other players, but there's no guarantee that the other players want or need that.

There are definitely conditions that mean you're limited in your ability to contribute (severely wounded, multiple negative conditions, etc), but I wouldn't define 'dead' as one of them.

[Thaluikhain]

Just throwing this out there, but what about dying means you are stuck playing the low level hireling tagging along for the rest of the session? You can still contribute, but you are at a significant handicap until you get a new character or whatever.

I'm not sure what you mean. Nothing says you're stuck playing any character. If the party is 4 PCs and no hirelings or henchmen, you may not have any options to play ANY character until the party has time to recruit someone. Inside the dungeon, introducing a NEW character is often easier than reviving a dead character (the goblins have a prison-cave, or whatever).

True, for this to work you'd either need to be tagging NPCs along or to find new ones. I was thinking that playing a lower level character than the one that died would allow the player to continue playing, but to also make being dead undesirable (compared to, say, getting a new character of the same level, at least right away).

[merxa]

the more general question is, should PCs die? My answer is yes, it should be on the table, there should be some set of decisions and/or dice rolls that cause PC death.

I agree that PCs should be able to die, in part because that's an expected part of genre simulation. Trivial PC death (such as stepping on a trip wire - rocks fall - you die) is bad, and exists in traditional D&D.

[...snip...]

D&D is a cooperative game. If being dead means you can't participate in the game for some number of real-life hours or multiple real-life sessions that's not ideal. If death is a temporary, easily removed condition (like hit point loss is in standard D&D), I don't think that gives death the seriousness that it deserves. For what it's worth, we don't have any [real] way to bring a dead character back to life. We also don't have to have 'super-dead' like 'disintegrated' or 'eradicated'.

Saying 'death can happen but it is super-easy to remove' is virtually the same as saying 'death can't happen', but it is the worst version of that to my personal taste.

I'm confused on your stance, you agree PCs should be able die, but then spend the remainder discussing how awful in play it is to die. The nature of dice is they provide RNG, unless you want to play a game where you can never die because of a dice rolls (and arguably this game is no longer d&d), this is a necessary fact, and yes if 10,000 groups play, someone is certainly going to die in the first or second session if the game allows for a series of bad dice rolls to kill a PC. Meta currencies can be something of a solution, but in my experience PCs tend to hoard a meta currency that lets them avoid death, and are therefore almost never in actual risk of death, which turns the death mechanic into a vestigial appendage and perhaps that's really what some people want, the illusion that death exists in their game when for all intensive purposes it doesn't because they don't want to actually suffer death in their ttrpg.

pulp cthulu has the
"Avoid certain death: (cost: all, at least 30) the hero gains 1d6+1 hit points and returns in the next scene"
which consumes luck, and luck tends to build somewhat slowly, so its likely if a character uses their luck to survive, they won't build up enough luck until a full session or two goes by. And if we take the case that say it takes 1-2 sessions to rebuild your luck to be able to spend the meta currency of 'Avoid certain death', that drastically changes the odds of actually dying, because if you continue with the original thought experiment that bad dice (in the below 1% area) causes death, when it actually happens and you spend meta currency to avoid it, you would then need to repeat bad dice within that narrow 1-2 session window and otherwise become 'safe' once more. Once death becomes so unlikely (1% of 1%), it practically doesn't exist as the vast majority of groups will never actually experience a PC death unless they want to die and take steps to actually die.

This is actually one of the faults of 5e, it is very difficult for a PC to die if they don't want to, even without introducing metacurrency. Healing word alone ensures near immortality for many. PC deaths in 5e tend to be from tpk or near tpk when a surviving member flees, or happen at very low levels before PCs have enough HP to avoid being one shot by nearly anything in the game.

When death is more likely at first level or very low levels, this is actually something of a bad 'onboarding' experience for new players who will also be unfamiliar with the system and therefore more likely to make less optimal survival choices. A new system should probably take some pains to make death at level 1 somewhat harder to achieve, and ramping up the 'difficulty' in the mid levels where players are expected to be more familiar with the system and able to make better choices to survive, I would also then expect the likelihood of death to further decrease in the higher levels as players achieve system mastery and their character powerlevels begins to reach escape velocity from the system (where only the top tier threats present the possibility of 'true' death, threats they presumably don't encounter regularly).

In terms of reducing the players pain of death or losing access to their character for an extended period of times, there are things that can be done to mitigate or eliminate it. I've been in more than one game, especially at low levels, where an unlikely death caused the player to erase their character name, replace it with a new one, and say "i'm here to avenge my kin", an easy if at times unsatisfying fix. Having a backup character can also be a fix, but comes with its own challenges, creating more work that may never see the light of day. Making character gen faster and easier helps with this of course. As suggested, playing a NPC can also be a fix, especially if it isn't 'true' death, but for whatever reason several out of game, real hours, will go by before they can access their character again. Metacurrency is a possible fix, but it tends to make death near impossible if the rate of currency replenishment isn't very carefully handed out. For a given campaign, the metacurrency could be a shared group currency that doesn't replenish, and it instead slowly drains until it is all gone, this would let groups and individuals decide which characters they are interested in keeping or okay with discarding, and avoid early death as well while eventually allowing for more tension as the campaign draws to a close and the currency dwindles (but can create player vs player conflict as a shared resource disappears). Another solution, and I believe people here have used it, is to discuss character death with the player, asking if they want to continue with that character or not, and then providing some in-game means of reviving them: 'oh look, that chest had a scroll of raise dead in it, lucky huh?', it makes death narrative, and death by narrative is likely what many people want, but it comes with the possible loss of immersion which can ruin a game as much as a PC death.

[deaddmwalking]

I think most players don't want a powerful hero to be instantly slain by a kobold that rolls a 20 three times in a row. Simultaneously, they want to have a chance to kill a powerful dragon by rolling a 20 three times in a row. Is that hypocritical? Now, it turns out that always giving people what they want is a special form of torture (there's a great Twilight Zone episode about that called 'A Nice Place to Visit').

In a similar way, players want to be successful (they want to win), and they want that success to mean something, meaning that they have a real chance to suffer defeat. From a design perspective, you do want it to be possible for the players to lose; you want them to FEEL that the danger of losing is both real and significant; but you don't want them to lose with great frequency. If every fight has a 50% chance of failure, it won't take very many fights before you have a TPK. But if it SEEMS like a fight has a 50% chance of failure but it is really more like 5-10%, successes are going to feel more significant.

Of course, even a 5-10% chance of failure is going to result in defeat more often than is actually good for the game, especially if defeat always looks like a TPK (which is the most likely outcome in D&D played RAW - it's hard not to go from 1 hit point to -10 hit points in a single attack, and being at 100% effectiveness while you have at least 1 hit point left encourages gambling it all on finishing off your opponent first).

A meta-currency that helps prevent death doesn't necessarily prevent defeat. Likewise, a meta-currency that offers benefits when spent encourages players to use it, but since not-dying is a really important goal from a player perspective, hoarding at least 1 is a natural behavior - but it's ALSO what you want as a designer. If the player has chosen to retain their metacurrency, they're signaling that they don't want to die, and if they do spend it, they're signaling that they're willing to take that risk...

For us, spending the metacurrency means that a specific attack won't kill you. Since you're unconscious/out of combat, there's not much incentive for opponents to keep hacking at your vulnerable body (at least, not until they've defeated your friends), but in a nod to realism, they absolutely COULD do that. In which case, you would (probably) be dead and while it's a bit of a dick move from the GM, if it makes sense with the opposition you're facing and/or it has been foreshadowed adequately, well, them's the breaks - our group at least would accept it. For us, this means PCs tend to die like Rasputin is alleged to - you have to try a few times before they're more than *Mostly Dead*. Once they're all dead the only thing you can do is go through their clothes looking for loose change.

Traditional D&D over-emphasizes death as the win condition. But even a 'save-or-defeat' that comes from a single roll tends not to be fun when it happens to a player - completely removing them from combat. For us, most of the 'one-shot spells' don't just defeat an opponent (full stop) - they severely limit them in a fashion that can be overcome. So, for example, paralyzing someone makes them easy to stab, and possibly kill, but they don't just stay paralyzed forever. They get to make a new check every round. Death (and unconsciousness) aren't like that. They involve significantly less engagement from the player. So while they're on the table and DO happen, driving the game from the design perspective to make those the most probably results isn't in anyone's interest.

Having a meta-currency doesn't risk breaking immersion in the same way as granting an exception by 'DM Pity', and it's genre appropriate. When we see Indiana Jones go over a cliff in a tank and we think 'there's no way he could survive that', but he does, we want it to be true so we accept the improbable 'he managed to grab a vine and pull himself up'. There's a pretty big range of 'near-certain death' that we can accept didn't happen based on media and even real life. When it is a character you love, you can almost justify it even if it is a refrigerator/nuclear bomb situation.

Anyway, none of that is to say that a powerful attack can't drop you to 0 hit points; it totally can. It's just that you can be confident you won't also be dead if you saved one of your tokens.

[Thaluikhain]

Hmmm, if people can raise dead or whatever, then you get a bigger distinction between TPK and single PC death.

What's people's thoughts on imperfect resurrection? That comes with Stat loss, or the wacky reincarnation thing Druids used to cast, IIRC, for example.

(I sorta like the idea of someone's character dying in game 1, playing a brain in a jar in game 2 and then playing a Frankenstein's monster style thing in game 3, but that'd be fiddly)

[Kaelik]

Hmmm, if people can raise dead or whatever, then you get a bigger distinction between TPK and single PC death.

What's people's thoughts on imperfect resurrection? That comes with Stat loss, or the wacky reincarnation thing Druids used to cast, IIRC, for example.

(I sorta like the idea of someone's character dying in game 1, playing a brain in a jar in game 2 and then playing a Frankenstein's monster style thing in game 3, but that'd be fiddly)

I don't like "imperfect resurrection" in people coming back different or worse. But in F&F over a certain level lots of people have "imperfect resurrection" in that they have conditions or things you can do to stop them. So for example one imperfect resolution is Lich Phylacteries, and another is Jade Pheonix Made self exploding.

[Krusk]

Coming back a level lower, or with a point of con loss, or even with 1 less skill point or whatever sucks. My PC died, showing I'm a little too weak for the adventure the DM designed. Now I get to try again, only weaker. Or, since I'm playing a game and no one wants to tell me to drive home right now and never return, I'm probably able to reroll a new PC. So in my experience, most people just roll a new PC when you use these rules. Sometimes it's Bill the fighter, Bob the fighter's identical twin, who had the same stats as Bob, except no con damage from resurrection, but other times it's just a totally new PC, depending on what the group will put up with.

Kaelik's examples, of Phylacteries, IMO is fine. Resurrection you can block is interesting. People always want to go on a quest where the soul finds its way back to the body in the ghost world, or physically march out of the underworld, or have their friends assemble a puzzle so they can come back, and its fun to have to block that for a villain. I think your option of coming back "Different" is another good example that's fine.

A rule I use when running with my primary group is super video-gamey, but also popular. If a PC is killed in a fight, no they aren't. They can't be brought back into the fight without resurrection magic, but otherwise, when the dust settles, I ask the player if their PC died, and if not, to describe how they are alive. Sometimes someone has an epic my fighting spirit will live on speech, and other times, its "nah that wasn't fatal, just knocked out". If its a TPK, we do the same thing, but the PCs are unconscious for [plot device] [time period]. Whoever wants to wakes up, and they might all be looted and left for dead, captured to be ransomed/interrogated/eaten and we pick up there.

This ruling lets me use 3.5 save or dies indiscriminately and run fairly hard for the group encounters all the time. I usually average one PC death every couple sessions, except no I don't. The primary outcome of this rule has been to help storytelling. We don't have to awkwardly introduce a new adventurer in the middle of the swamp of dread who coincidentally is as experienced as the rest of the group, but also fills the role gap of the gal who died yesterday, and immediately becomes the party's new best friend. We have the same party who set out on the adventure, largely, as the ones who finished it. The epic destiny of the guy fated to destroy the ring is actually the guy who gets to destroy the ring, instead of the person he randomly stumbled into during a side quest that then watched him die and later decided why not see this through.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Coming back a level lower, or with a point of con loss, or even with 1 less skill point or whatever sucks. My PC died, showing I'm a little too weak for the adventure the DM designed. Now I get to try again, only weaker.

I think the majority of the time, what your death showed is that a series of unfortunate dice results happened. Your character was probably fine, but bad runs of luck happen. No adventure is or can be designed to a margin of 1 point of Con.

[deaddmwalking]

Coming back but damaged is not something I like. Beyond just sucking as a player (which it does) it creates a distinction between an organically played character from 1st to level X; a character that is created at Level x never assumes they had multiple resurrections in play. So if the guy who has been playing for 15 years has -5 CON at 18th level and his best friend creates an 18th level character with no detriments, that doesn't seem to reward the play experience appropriately.

[pragma]

Phoenix Guard, an otherwise inconsequential indie game, has you come back stronger after you die because of "something something phoenix", which I thought was a fun conceit. You still have a fixed number of lives (7 total), but each death gives your character a perk when you come blazing back into existence. When I first floated it around here, it was ridiculed because players could just commit suicide 6 times to be ahead of the level curve, but I think "more than perfect resurrection" could be an OK consolation prize for limited death-save metacurrency.

[merxa]

I don't mind if raise dead causes a temporary weakness, ie it takes you a day to fully recover, but any permanent damage or level loss is terrible and creates large incentives against playing the same character instead of a new one.

Krusks solution is full on narrative death, everyone essentially always has 1 point of metacurrency to save themselves. One advantage this has when formalized to the players is to lower the stakes of fights, PCs too often have a strong incentive to fight to the death because surrendering isn't seen as a valid option -- getting knocked out in that barroom brawl is okay because you aren't going to also get your throat cut. It also easier for the GM to engineer a 'captured' and jail scenario (although player reception to these scenarios are often mixed). I'm curious if this is a PC only rule or if the occasional NPC or BBEG gets a save or two. There's still an issue of lost equipment, in some flavors of d&d losing equipment is as bad or really worse then dying.

All in all i think Krusks solution is okay and worth offering in any high fantasy setting as an alternate rule. PCs can still 'fail', they just happen to live to see the aftermath. I can see it becoming a bit problematic at some tables if some players try to abuse to system by engaging in numerous high risk escapades knowing they'll always come out the other end safe -- 'don't worry gang, i've got this death trap covered'.

Another solution that comes to mind is to formalize a secondary 'life' for when a character dies or becomes unavailable for an extended period of time, something like you raise immediately as a ghost, or spirit, or your anima births a soul guardian or whatever etc so 'dying' just lets you play your cool secondary aspect instead for a while.

[Krusk]

I'm curious if this is a PC only rule or if the occasional NPC or BBEG gets a save or two. There's still an issue of lost equipment, in some flavors of d&d losing equipment is as bad or really worse then dying.

I've used it on allied NPCs who were killed in fluke or unexciting scenarios. I guess if I codified it, it would be that since I control the NPC, they have the same rules, but I'm way less likely to choose "nah he didn't die" as an option than a player does. If I did it with a villain, I feel like I'd be dodging dice from players. Villains have enough handwave access to resurrection through plot devices and "he totally had a clone prepped..." situations that I'm not sure it's worth trying to pull this.

As for equipment, yes, sometimes they lose that, and it's pretty bad. The thing that prevents players from rerolling over this, is I tend to give a lot more than WBL, and a new PC comes in with WBL. We couple that with the unwritten rule of "if your character dies, and your new PC takes 100% of his old, ontop of your existing gear, just for a power grab, random loot tables will turn off" rule. We have a new player to the group try to pull this once every couple years, and a player usually shuts it down before I have to say anything.

I'm really against PC death unless it makes narrative sense. If its not a momentous or serious occasion, a PC death is probably just derailing an interesting story.

I can see it becoming a bit problematic at some tables if some players try to abuse to system by engaging in numerous high risk escapades knowing they'll always come out the other end safe -- 'don't worry gang, i've got this death trap covered'.

Technically, our standing rule is that the DM may optionally allow it (bullshitty 5e style the DM will fix it language). And the explanation is, that if you purposefully do stupid stuff to die, or you can't explain how you're not actually dead, you can't come back. So if you throw your body down over the pit of lava to make a plank for the rest of the party to cross, you're probably just dead. If you get disintegrated, it's probably a longer logical leap for you to return than if you got beaten with a sword for a while. (maybe you say you'll come back in 2-3 in game days, after you march your way out of the underworld)

[Grek]

About having Not-Die currency, would that be it's only use, or would you use it for other things? If it's only used for that, you don't have the problem of it being wasted and not available when needed for important Not-Dying, though.

Spending your Not-Die currency should alter your character in some fashion. For example, I remember reading one system that gave you a Scar the first time you spent your Not-Die currency on a threat (+4 to saves & cannot be surprised by that kind of threat in the future) and an Affliction (permanent disability, but an extra hit die due to grizzled experience) if you need to spend a second point of Not-Die currency on the same threat. Third strike and you're properly dead, though.

Higher level characters would be allowed to pick a small number of Scars and/or Afflictions as part of the process of generating a character, if they want some.

[Thaluikhain]

About having Not-Die currency, would that be it's only use, or would you use it for other things? If it's only used for that, you don't have the problem of it being wasted and not available when needed for important Not-Dying, though.

Spending your Not-Die currency should alter your character in some fashion. For example, I remember reading one system that gave you a Scar the first time you spent your Not-Die currency on a threat (+4 to saves & cannot be surprised by that kind of threat in the future) and an Affliction (permanent disability, but an extra hit die due to grizzled experience) if you need to spend a second point of Not-Die currency on the same threat. Third strike and you're properly dead, though.

Higher level characters would be allowed to pick a small number of Scars and/or Afflictions as part of the process of generating a character, if they want some.

I like that, characterful and makes consequences for dying.

[tussock]

Someone had a thing with the death flag.

Where, nothing can kill your PC, because they're a PC, unless you think it's dramatically appropriate to risk that. Boss NPCs can have the same trick.

Then, get like +4 to hit and damage and +1 attack, or -4 to opponent saves, or whatever, but you earn that by risking death, raising your death flag, so now the standard game mechanics can just kill you, for this one scene.

--

In general, you can also have save or die stuff all over the place in a game where it's level-gated in a way that basically never hits the PCs, or the boss monsters. Low level stuff gets splatted, often doesn't even get a save, just fucking die, but the PCs don't normally face critters who can do that to them, at least not by the time they get there. So Finger of Death that you get at 13th level, only kills things up to 10th level max, and taking on higher level NPCs becomes an interesting life choice for your characters.

Which, is good for the verisimilitude of the local lord and his army needing the PCs to deal with this problem in the first place. But that's all a lot more thinking and checking your work to set up than just having an arbitrary death flag mechanic that only applies to the select few in the first place.

[Thaluikhain]

In general, you can also have save or die stuff all over the place in a game where it's level-gated in a way that basically never hits the PCs, or the boss monsters. Low level stuff gets splatted, often doesn't even get a save, just fucking die, but the PCs don't normally face critters who can do that to them, at least not by the time they get there. So Finger of Death that you get at 13th level, only kills things up to 10th level max, and taking on higher level NPCs becomes an interesting life choice for your characters.

Which, is good for the verisimilitude of the local lord and his army needing the PCs to deal with this problem in the first place. But that's all a lot more thinking and checking your work to set up than just having an arbitrary death flag mechanic that only applies to the select few in the first place.

Could be useful when you're dealing with lower level monsters that come in big numbers to be a threat and you don't want to roll dice normally for each of them you are killing. One dice roll, tick off one (or more) enemies, done, no more book-keeping.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Someone had a thing with the death flag.

Where, nothing can kill your PC, because they're a PC, unless you think it's dramatically appropriate to risk that. Boss NPCs can have the same trick.

Then, get like +4 to hit and damage and +1 attack, or -4 to opponent saves, or whatever, but you earn that by risking death, raising your death flag, so now the standard game mechanics can just kill you, for this one scene.

Let's say I am in a party of four players.

Player 1 uses this flag occasionally to stomp in important encounters.

Player 2 tried that but got unlucky and their character graphically died 1st time, they now use it less if at all.

Player 3 fears character death and has never and will never use the flag no matter how desperate the numeric odds. They are always numerically inferior cannot compete in the boss fights in particular. Also they by self selection bias are also the numerically weakest character that makes the weakest decisions in all other respects as well.

I am player 4. I raise the flag 100 percent of the time to stomp all encounters. I ESPECIALLY enjoy the large bonus against weak encounters to really secure the stomp. My character dies and I don't care my next character will also be permanently numerically superior flying the death flag.

The system is working as perfectly as it can. Each player only risks character death exactly as much as they choose.

I would however identify a glaring problem.

Pop quiz. What's the problem?

[Foxwarrior]

Is the problem that... There isn't a cruel and punishing level loss system on death that makes you (and to a lesser extent, player 2) weaker from the dying?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Is the problem that your character doesn't also die in a badass explosion that levels the playing field while leaving your allies completely unscathed?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

a badass explosion that levels the playing field while leaving your allies completely unscathed?

Hilariously. If for some reason this did produce a sufficiently badass explosion to level everything the other PCs automatically ARE immune to it or not based on death flag preferences. Depending on how raising or lowering the flag might work they could reasonable be immune to it just for the round on which it happens (or the few rounds on which it is most likely to happen).

But no. Obviously I wasn't highlighting that. I was probably indicating something to do with unfair variance in footwear.

[deaddmwalking]

Phonelobster,

I think you're going to have to explain the problem. As Player 4, I don't think you have a problem with ANYONE ELSE'S CHOICE. Why do you think they have a problem with yours?

At the very least, you're missing a lot of game-time waiting to introduce a new character. For a +4 to hit/damage unless it was just a +1 to hit.

DeathFlag can be genre-appropriate. Completely overshadowing the other players can be a problem, but considering how long it has taken to convince people that 'Fighters aren't as good as Wizards', I think convincing people that 'people who choose not to risk death in an encounter being minorly (but measurably) weaker than characters that do is a real problem'. Especially if the difference is like +/- one Feat.

[Kaelik]

"It might take a while to convince people of the optimum choice" doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, and we are sitting her talking about adding in this numerical advantage choice for no discernable reason.

If you want people to be able to not die, give them the ability to not die. But instead of a very dumb choice for mechanical benefit, let them actually have an in character way to explain it and not create a boring numerical advantage out of nowhere.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

The problem I thought was utterly obvious. Giant mechanical advantage for no (subjective) cost while playing against actual the intended playstyle. Being very clearly motivated to do so by a mechanic not intended to motivate you to do that. Creating needless large mechanical disparity between players in the process.

And fighters not being as good as wizards makes it clear that the problem is there whether the players acknowledge it or not. Maybe even more so when they do not acknowledge it. Player 3 is a drag on the party especially in the hard encounters. Players 4 is doing far too well especially on the easy to normal rated encounters. If there are too many player 3s, even player 2s then the "big dramatic encounters" will routinely be fought at a huge mechanical disadvantage and losing "every important fight" is WORSE than characters dying in every important fight.

You cannot rely on players to make the right choice at the right times to make this mechanic work. I'm GOING to use this for a boost on every fight, including the weak ones that don't matter, other players will NEVER use it even when they clearly need to. Have you SEEN the way they hoard potions forever? You can't get some of them to drink a god damn strength potion for the big fight, there will be plenty of players that will clearly NEVER take a death flag for that fight.

And Player 4 isn't even the most exploitative. What about Player 5, who never takes a death flag in big dangerous fights but ALWAYS takes it in already easy fights that are already no risk to their character? What about Player 6 who DOES take death flags in big important fights but does so selectively and where possible with timing on when they raise it to only do so when their personal character survival is still pretty much ensured.

What if players only take death flags when they have some sort of match up advantage. So the Fire wizard can ONLY die... when facing paper tigers? That's just turning everything ass backwards, the Fire Wizard should specifically be at risk of death when fighting Extinguisher Hydras instead, but THAT isn't going to happen is it? Even if a Fire Wizard did, for some reason, turn on the Death Flag when facing the Extinguisher Hydra... why are you giving them a numeric bonus for fighting their natural weakness? It's not even a natural weakness anymore at that point.

Also as Player 4 I lose no game time from death flag abuse I have 5 spare characters in my pocket that I prepared earlier, not that it takes me long to make a characters from scratch, especially if "whatever they are a disposable one".

I'm sorry but as presented, death flags you can turn on and off at will for a big fat numeric advantage, it is a broken mechanic. In that form it CANNOT work without an extreme case of a virulent strain of gentlemen's agreement. It's so bad the same thing would be objectively better if the death flag being on or not is something enforced on the players at the GMs whim, "guys THIS fight is a death flag fight so waaaatch oooouuut!". And that is also still clearly a bad idea.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't buy it. At least not in the abstract.

I play in a game where one player frequently chooses non-optimal battle choices for character reasons. The character is a sneaky rogue and COULD get sneak attack every round but instead spends 2-3 rounds setting up those attacks. Even without 'death flag' we have characters that choose suboptimal routines and the game adapts.

Stomping encounters harder than you would have is not a problem. You were going to win easily and you won even more easily - that's not hurting anything.

As for 'I have 5 characters', that doesn't mean anything for our group. There's a narrative element, so characters get introduced when it makes sense. That might mean that we find someone in the wilderness, but not USUALLY. The death of characters that have major plot-related interests cannot be easily replaced by 'we found someone wandering in the woods and they look like they could help us fight goblins'.

Sure, if your game is 100% murder-hoboing, maybe that works.

There are lots of video games that offer 'limited invincibility'. Taking advantage of a temporary power-up doesn't have to be a problem. Having characters CHOOSE different levels of efficacy doesn't have to be a problem.

MISREPRESENTING those choices would be a problem. There's not a universal 'optimal way to play' because different players value different aspects of the experience. For most players, having a chance to contribute is sufficient - but some players do want to be the best.

In our system, characters have a limited pool of points that can be used for a variety of minor benefits including gaining a small amount of mana/hit points, taking 10 on a saving throw that you rolled poorly on (assuming taking 10 helps you), converting more serious critical damage into less serious damage, etc. It also allows you to automatically pass a 'death save' when you would otherwise be killed. TECHNICALLY someone could keep stabbing you after you're dead, so it doesn't GUARANTEE you won't die if you happen to fall unconscious underwater, or in the area of multiple fireballs, etc. However, in practice, it basically does work that way. Only in VERY RARE CIRCUMSTANCES do people spend their last point, choosing to reserve it to avoid death. However we had two big fights in a time-based adventure (rescue hostages) and we spent most of those points in the first one (not realizing that there would be a second one). In this specific case every single character used up all of their points (and ended up unconscious at least once). As a result, the fight had significantly increased dramatic stakes!

Our system isn't EXACTLY like what Tussock mentioned, but if you squint, you can see that it's not far off. In my experience, optimal use of these points is less important than other character decisions. Encounter design can also include these types of considerations - the idea that the same adventure can be used for lower-level groups (and thus be harder) or higher-level groups (and thus be easier) isn't revolutionary.

When designing a system, you should consider ways to avoid trap-options and help ensure that characters are COMPRABLE, but that DOES NOT MEAN that they're identical. In the same-game test some classes can shine in particular encounters and struggle in others - as long as the game includes a wide-variety of encounters that will help ensure that the spotlight shifts appropriately. If a game is going to focus EXCLUSIVELY on an area where one class has a deficiency, that can be an issue, but it doesn't mean that having deficiencies is AUTOMATICALLY bad.

Having players spend resources to be slightly better in a fight (like by using potions) when another player doesn't choose to spend those resources is a really strange area to fixate on in the name of balance.