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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 3:07PM
#41
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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What you're failing to understand is that if death is permanent, I won't invest any emotion in my character. Time isn't an investment either, play with this character, play with that character; I'm playing with some character.
Not really. That is you and how YOU do it. I've played with dozens of people who feel the same way I do about death and we still invest in our guys.
I've played 1e for decades, I don't even bother referring to my character by name or talking in character until I have at least 20 hit points and I primarily play Magic Users. In one case, due to a low Con, I kept expecting death with every single encounter right up until he finally died in a fight with hill giants in the very first round of combat after more than a year of playing the character. Two hits by thrown rocks and I was instantly killed.
Total emotional investment zero: I pulled my replacement character sheet out of my notebook and announced "I don't want to be raised. I'm getting a soda, let me know when they meet my new Magic-User" Said Magic User also didn't have a personality or roleplaying voice for another nine months, when he finally got enough hit points to be nearly certain of surviving the first round of our combats.
I tend to play in groups that roleplay, so the experiences are different. I'm not saying your way is wrong, just different. When people roleplay, they tend to get into their characters.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 3:08PM
#42
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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There are two possibilities:
1) Don't allow ressurections.
2) Do some temporary, marginal penalty.
Those are really the options. Anything in-between is bad, because they lead to highly unfun death spirals and make your character worse than the rest of the party unnecessarily, and make the game less fun for everyone because you end up being a load on the rest of them.
You're wrong. There are many ways to do it, and those are only 2. A third way to do it is to have raises be rare, and for the penalty to be temporary and small OR a fourth way is to make them rare and have no penalty, OR...
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 3:09PM
#43
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Date Joined:
Aug 11, 2006
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>> Losing a character you have invested with time and emotion is a heavy cost
>> of death.
>
> What you're failing to understand is that if death is permanent, I won't invest
> any emotion in my character
And I'm going to +1 this. In the circumstances described, I'll be giving my character all of the emotional investment that I would give my pawns in chess, because that's more or less what the character has been reduced to.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 3:16PM
#44
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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>> Losing a character you have invested with time and emotion is a heavy cost
>> of death.
>
> What you're failing to understand is that if death is permanent, I won't invest
> any emotion in my character
And I'm going to +1 this. In the circumstances described, I'll be giving my character all of the emotional investment that I would give my pawns in chess, because that's more or less what the character has been reduced to.
Not everyone plays D&D as a roleplaying game. Some treat it as a fancy board game, and that's fine if it works for you.
For those of us who create characters to roleplay, and give them depth and meaning, there is an investment in the character. Of course, it usually takes very poor game play and tactics to die in the first place, so it isn't like we die often, but when we do, the character is done.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 3:25PM
#45
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Date Joined:
Dec 13, 2003
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Not everyone plays D&D as a roleplaying game. Some treat it as a fancy board game, and that's fine if it works for you.
For those of us who create characters to roleplay, and give them depth and meaning, there is an investment in the character. Of course, it usually takes very poor game play and tactics to die in the first place, so it isn't like we die often, but when we do, the character is done.
I take offense to your implication that those groups who choose to have resurrection as an option are less interested in roleplaying and interesting storylines.
What I find most frustrating about 4E is that I can see it includes the D&D game I've always wanted to play, but the game is so lathered in tatical combat rules that I have thus far been unable to coax the game I want out.
When the Cat's a Stray, the Mice will Pray
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 3:33PM
#46
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Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2006
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Not everyone plays D&D as a roleplaying game. Some treat it as a fancy board game, and that's fine if it works for you.
For those of us who create characters to roleplay, and give them depth and meaning, there is an investment in the character. Of course, it usually takes very poor game play and tactics to die in the first place, so it isn't like we die often, but when we do, the character is done.
I find as a player it's a difficult balance, my DM will sometimes deny being res'd in certain situations and I can't blame him, perhaps the spell could not locate the soul or something. but there's been a few to many times in the past where something random happens and he totally annihlates a PC without actually trying to.
Case in point one of my sorcerers got snuck up apon right after a battle, one of the lesser BBEG's was suppose to attack and start up another quick encounter to move on the story but instead pulled a critical on me with a scythe doing some horrendous amount of damage and utterly destroying the entire storyline. (evidently we needed my greater dispel magic to gain entry to the keep we where about to attack)
Another just random but not story breaking event was a very looong adventure that lead to a battle against Tchazzar (FR Dragon) I don't think we where really suppose to fight him but he tossed out a breath attack and took my sorcerer from full to -30 when I needed a natural 20 to dodge the breath attack. It was kinda like a "woooah" moment at how powerfull he was but there was really nothing I could of done to prevent it from happening and it was pretty crappy 
edit: these are 3 and 3.5 encounters and I find damage a little less spikey in 4th, but it's still deadly
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 3:43PM
#47
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Date Joined:
May 12, 2008
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I Am Kinda Hardcoreish, I Like games that dont have the angel of life hovering over me going "DONT Worrie nothing will ever kill you for i am such a pretty angel and will keep you alive" *Known as the DM*
However killing the whole group and such is expected, Though i dont want insane mood activeated.
I dont like super kill mood, But however You know level one characters fighting level 14 Monsters and such constently.
I wouldnt ***** to much if the boss battle was level 1 characters fighting the level 6 Solo guy or w/e.
Ive had worse (Like the 14 monster with pretty much instent KO) and yes you can beat the level 6 monster if your smart enough (Half the time we use grapple and other ideas and such to help out)
But I dont think it makes the game More or less enjoyable to fight differnt things and such.
Kill off the party = No big deal for me.
The thing thats a big deal for me is when another player starts *****ing about it or starts bragging how much more powerful his character is agest others.
Thus i rather agree it is offensive that people beleve it would be less enjoyable for all.
Death loseing its teeth? No,
Just dont use as many "Well i killed off a Player Character but a party death? Na"
Just make sure they have a way to run away from it,
That way if they want to stay and fight the monster thats 10 levels or higher **** em let em burn. If they want to run away ... GOOd for them, Dont kill em for the smartness.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 4:02PM
#48
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Date Joined:
Aug 20, 2008
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I don't think resurrection rules have an impact on the emotional investment of a player in a given character. I think that's the individual, natural choice of the player and there is little I can do as a DM to prevent it.
I always run games that allow resurrection precisely as the rules detail. My findings have been:
For the players who don't get invested in their character enough to care if they die, the availability of resurrection is irrelevant because they can just create a new character and not give a damn.
For those who really care about their characters, available resurrection is good because I'm not destroying their investments. If I play a "hardcore" game with no resurrections, those players will become distraught if their characters die. Possible permanent death in no way makes them "roleplay better." That's totally self-motivated.
I think we're all giving ourselves too much credit as DMs. Motivation to participate in a plot is something the DM can influence. Motivation to roleplay (or love your character) is not.
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 8:42PM
#49
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Date Joined:
Apr 22, 2004
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Oddly enough, in my last high level campaign, if a character died, I used a method something like 4E.
The character dropped a level when they were raised from the dead, but their rate of experience gain increased (I wasn't using the XP system as written.I was handing out levels when it felt appropriate to the story) such that the character caught up after about 10 encounters.
I had decided early on that there were few clerics who could raise in the campaign world. I the party met only one who was 9+ (and thus had Raise Dead, and one other who had Ressurection. Of course, it became a moot point after the party cleric got to a high enough level to cast Raise Dead. Most people preferred him to use Revivify (miniatures handbook) though. I think there were 3 PC deaths in that campaign, and I wouldn't want the players to roll up new characters. After investing as much as they did into roleplaying, party dynamics, and storyline, forcing them to roll up new characters late in the game would have been terrible!
Heck, two of the players in that campaign weren't very into RPing, but they loved their characters, and eventually gave them unique and interesting personalities. Forcing them to roll up new characters would have shattered that.
In my opinion, ressurection is right for some campaigns, but not all. It's really the decision of the DM and the players as to what types of ressurection magic are available, if any. And certainly, the availability of ressurection magic has no bearing on the amount of RP it is possible to do in a game!
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5 years ago ::
Sep 30, 2008 - 9:49PM
#50
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Date Joined:
Oct 15, 2007
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For our group, death in 3.5 was just another condition, like blindness or confusion. Cast the appropriate spell, sprinkle on some gold, get back up and go about your business. At worst a PC would lag behind by a session or so in leveling up. Mostly it didn't matter all that much. And, at higher levels, you just paid extra gold to come back without any penalty. "Tusk is down again? Well, get out another True Res scroll. We should buy/scribe a few more next time we're in town."
In 4ed I haven't had any deaths come up yet, but there have been some close calls. I don't see a big problem with the current Raise Dead setup. The -1 amounts to about the same thing as 3.5's penalty but is a little nicer in that you don't have to worry about de-leveling your PC for a session.
Honestly, death is only meaningful if the players/DM make it meaningful. Some kind of harsh/semi-harsh "death penalty" isn't going to make death meaningful, just more annoying if a Raise Dead type spell is available. Eliminating the Raise Dead option also doesn't make death meaningful, just permanent...for that character.
Sacrificing yourself by standing your ground to buy time for your companions to escape with the prisoners your party just rescued in order to prevent a war may be a memorable and meaningful death for a character.
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