http://www.enworld.org/forum/s...-End-Character-Death
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For me, I like my games where death is a major obstacle or a penalizing experience. The higher the stakes (such as tournament play) the better. The reason from my perspective is that table-top rpgs is about risk vs. reward. If you eliminate risk in the GM playstyle or put narrative control in the players' hands, then you no longer have an rpg, but you're playing a codified version of Make Believe. For some players who are playing in a campaign from 1st to X level, keeping their character alive or with minimal penalty to come back from the dead, there's incentive to mitigate the risk and to be focused on the story. However, I consider spending two - three years of play time in a campaign in which my character is going to ultimately make it to the End Game, beat the BBEG, and retire filthy stinking rich, to be boring. Even if they die at times along the way, unless it's a major penalty to come back from the dead, my character is still going to have the other PC's bail them out or the GM will take pity on the character and provide a "way out" which ultimately doesn't provide any challenge to me (as a player).
I know that other players will disagree and that's fine. The ultimate goal is really having fun in your own game. This is just my personal preference when it comes to character death.
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Yes, its quite a sweeping essay.
You could spend some time on your CoC character, and (earlier) WHFRP has very interesting chardev options. And then there is GURPS or Champion/Hero, where you could spend more time making a character then playing one.
Back to D&D. The mechanics of character death didn't really change from 1E to 3E. In some ways, 3E is deadlier. And 3E seemed to coincide with a push to let the dice fall as they may, making it potentially very deadly.
But Treebore is right, a DM could always run a harsh game, or a more forgiving one, and all sorts in between. Largely independent of mechanics.
But lets set aside things like complexity (tangentially related), story (somewhat related), and balance (less related then you might think).
Lets look at 4E. 4E was designed to take out any fudging by making characters very robust. What happened? An arms race. Even in the first module, some super tough encounters that could lead to a TPK. All sorts of house rules, and eventually an official escalation of monster capabilities, especially damage.
Gamers wanted the deadly back.
People like to pretend to risk death. Thats why it permeates drama, and not just action-adventure. Its a core part of the RPG experience: risking death without actually dying yourself.
You don't have that, you have just got candy-land.
Thoughts on player controlled risk: "How likely do you want it to be your character dies? In a random encounter? In a boss fight? Do you want to be able to resurrect? Do you want resurrection sickness? How much of a setback do you want character death to be?"
MOST games, death is only a slight inconvenience that'll only set you back a few minutes worth of play effort. You respawn at the last save point. Oldschool Sonic didn't have save points so you had to beat the whole game in 1 go without losing all your extra lives. Some gamers would rather that style than one with any save points. The trick is making them happy in the same team as gamers who want their char to have plot armor. David getting upset over losing 10hp comes to mind. Could be he was worried about losing his char for good in spite of all our assurances. Or he was afraid of his char looking less than invincible. One thought I had was starting chars get 100hp, monsters get 10hp and deal no more than 10 damage... Players can then invest HP like chargen points into things like (slight) extra damage. This way you put the player in control of how hard it is to kill his char. If he wants a glass cannon, he could invest 99hp and end up with 1hp. Any monster can kill him in 1 hit.
Also, the "full withdraw" action in pathfinder is a great idea. Most games allow you to run away if things get hairy. Recently in FFXIV Kitau attacked a lvl 3 elite. After drinking a healing potion it was clear she wasn't going to survive the fight. Activate sprint and escape! No death! And even if she did die, worst that happens is a slight setback.
Player controlled randomness: If players like the gamble aspect of gaming, they roll d20. If they want a less random game, d6+7. And possibly have players choose how random the monster rolls are too.
For example. All monsters have a set attack value (no dice) and damage value. The player then rolls his defense against the static value. Like trying to beat a DC target. If the player makes the save, it's only 1/2 damage. Or no damage if they have the "takes no damage from this kind of save" feat. Could streamline combat a great deal. DM only has to worry about monster movement and targeting.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:24, Thu 11 July 2013.