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themocaw
2009-09-01, 11:08 AM
Crossposted from the WoTC forums.

So, my DM is implementing this house rule in his 4e game so that dying has more of an impact.


In the event a PC dies, we will be using slightly modified Death Penalty rules. Instead of the normal -1 to attack/skill/save/ability checks until 3 milestones, the penalty is increased to -4.

Question: how will this affect gameplay? Is this workable? I pointed out to him that this basically makes a PC crippled for up to six encounters. He pointed out that A) milestones don't necessarily use combat encounters, and B) the obvious solution is not to die.

Boci
2009-09-01, 11:10 AM
Crossposted from the WoTC forums.

So, my DM is implementing this house rule in his 4e game so that dying has more of an impact.



Question: how will this affect gameplay? Is this workable? I pointed out to him that this basically makes a PC crippled for up to six encounters. He pointed out that A) milestones don't necessarily use combat encounters, and B) the obvious solution is not to die.

Your DM has a point, but the enjoyment of the players is also important. How about trying to reach him halfway and agreeing on a -3 penalty that is reduced by 1 for every milestone achieved?

kc0bbq
2009-09-01, 11:18 AM
No, the DM doesn't have a point, this is just being sadistic.

Eloel
2009-09-01, 11:41 AM
No, the DM doesn't have a point, this is just being sadistic.

You're DIEING. For God's sake, this is not a hack&slash computer game where you can just click 'yes' on 'Try Again', you NEED to have penalty that actually hurts the character.

lsfreak
2009-09-01, 11:43 AM
You're DIEING. For God's sake, this is not a hack&slash computer game where you can just click 'yes' on 'Try Again', you NEED to have penalty that actually hurts the character.

There's better ways of punishing death than by making it more likely you and your entire party die again.

Ravens_cry
2009-09-01, 11:49 AM
You're DIEING. For God's sake, this is not a hack&slash computer game where you can just click 'yes' on 'Try Again', you NEED to have penalty that actually hurts the character.
Point. However once the players spend the resources to bring back a beloved character, they don't want to be gimped so much they die yet again. Otherwise they will just think 'screw it, I'll just make a new character', and death becomes cheap again. Even worse, now the players are averse to becoming attached to those characters.
Great, you just hit yourself twice with one stone. Ouch.
I think the milestone idea of Boci is a good compromise.

Myou
2009-09-01, 11:50 AM
There's better ways of punishing death than by making it more likely you and your entire party die again.

What are they?

Seriously, because I can't think of any. Other than rolaeplay penalties or makig it takes several sessions to get revived, which are both bad ideas.

nightwyrm
2009-09-01, 12:58 PM
-4 penalty? That's comparable to reducing somebody's level by 8. Might as well just make a new char.

Death penalties are always tricky. You want to penalize someone for dying, but too much penalty just means the player with the dead char is just gonna make a new char. No way around that, unless you plan to kick players out of the game for dying.

Boci
2009-09-01, 01:26 PM
-4 penalty? That's comparable to reducing somebody's level by 8. Might as well just make a new char.

Not quite. They do not loose their powers or feats they gained in the last 4 levels.


Death penalties are always tricky. You want to penalize someone for dying, but too much penalty just means the player with the dead char is just gonna make a new char. No way around that, unless you plan to kick players out of the game for dying.

Really one would hope that the players get attached enough to their characters so they they are ready to endure some penalties in return for the character they've been playing until then who will hopefully have connections, allies and nemesis.

Foryn Gilnith
2009-09-01, 01:36 PM
You need some sort of gradual decline. Going from -1 to -0, as per core rules, is reasonable. Going from -4 to -0 because of one milestone is not. Either make it -3, -2, -1, -0 (after appropriate milestones) or -4, -3, -2, -1, -0.

lsfreak
2009-09-01, 01:37 PM
Really one would hope that the players get attached enough to their characters so they they are ready to endure some penalties in return for the character they've been playing until then who will hopefully have connections, allies and nemesis.

As Raven's_cry said, though, too harsh of mechanical penalties for death means that the entire party would prefer the guy just reroll. That either leads to disattachment from the character (when you can just reroll), or enmity towards the guy who happened to die (if you're not allowed to) because his death leads to the entire party being likely to die.

Non-mechanical penalties with a small mechanical penalty work best. This means roleplaying changes and possibly playing an intern character (an NPC the PC's already know well, or someone who will become a recurring NPC later) for one session while they go on a side quest to resurrect their friend.

Melamoto
2009-09-01, 01:52 PM
How about removing all Death Penalties, and instead make death a lot harder to recover from? I'm talking, remove Resurrection and all variants, and make a deity granted quest necessary to persuade them to wrench them back to the mortal realm. Give the character control of an NPC (Or, if they have one, a backup character) for the few sessions until they get their character back.

nightwyrm
2009-09-01, 01:57 PM
Not quite. They do not loose their powers or feats they gained in the last 4 levels.



What's the point of having all those extra powers and feats if you can't hit anything with them. I'd rather lose two to three actual levels than get a -4 penalty.

Boci
2009-09-01, 01:59 PM
What's the point of having all those extra powers and feats if you can't hit anything with them. I'd rather lose two to three actual levels than get a -4 penalty.

I was just pointing out its not quite as harsh as losing 4 levels.


How about removing all Death Penalties, and instead make death a lot harder to recover from? I'm talking, remove Resurrection and all variants, and make a deity granted quest necessary to persuade them to wrench them back to the mortal realm. Give the character control of an NPC (Or, if they have one, a backup character) for the few sessions until they get their character back.

What about the XP the other PCs gained during that side quest?

kc0bbq
2009-09-01, 05:21 PM
You're DIEING. For God's sake, this is not a hack&slash computer game where you can just click 'yes' on 'Try Again', you NEED to have penalty that actually hurts the character.You're dying in a fantasy world where magic can bring you back. You should not be punished if the DM screws up on an encounter's balance, and the entire party shouldn't be stuck with an anchor around their neck because of it.

Why do you NEED to have massively harsh penalty anyway? If someone insisted on a penalty that harsh I would make a dozen characters and just kamikaze and move on to the next just to make a point. Massive penalties do not help the story, they just ensure that the first soldier type creature you see kills you again while you can't hit it.

Boci
2009-09-01, 05:31 PM
You're dying in a fantasy world where magic can bring you back. You should not be punished if the DM screws up on an encounter's balance, and the entire party shouldn't be stuck with an anchor around their neck because of it.

There are other reasons for PC's deaths.


Why do you NEED to have massively harsh penalty anyway? If someone insisted on a penalty that harsh I would make a dozen characters and just kamikaze and move on to the next just to make a point. Massive penalties do not help the story, they just ensure that the first soldier type creature you see kills you again while you can't hit it.

To enforce the idea that death is a big issue that cannot be completly neutralized with a spell? Becuase hte DM likes the idea that you need time getting use to your body having just been forced out of it?

Kylarra
2009-09-01, 05:32 PM
Keep in mind that a -4 save penalty means that you now fail your saves on everything below 14, so instead of your normal 55% you now have a 35% chance to make any save, so any save ends effects will be much more likely to continue debilitating you.

kc0bbq
2009-09-01, 05:56 PM
There are other reasons for PC's deaths.

To enforce the idea that death is a big issue that cannot be completly neutralized with a spell? Becuase hte DM likes the idea that you need time getting use to your body having just been forced out of it?There are reasons, but they're not always the PCs' fault.

Rendering the PC useless based on milestones (which aren't always under the control of the PCs, either) is not the way to do it. Hence the death penalty as written into 4e. It hurts, but it's not completely crippling.

-4 penalty is a unjustified in 4e where *everything* scales properly.

Kylarra
2009-09-01, 06:05 PM
It's not really hurting the character as much as it hurts the party (unless the character is a leader, and then it hurts slightly less). Your striker that can no longer hit things things means that battles are going to take longer, which means you take more hits, which means making those 3 milestones is going to be hard as hell.

You were a defender? Good luck drawing aggro when the monsters realize you're no real threat.

Controller? Good luck using those powers at -4.

Leader, you can still use your 2/encounter haelz, just can't provide your minor boosts reliably anymore.

Tiki Snakes
2009-09-01, 06:08 PM
Just for comparison, the other source of -4 penalties you could possibly encounter is something like clumsy (flying, etc). Which is basically a way to represent a creature that effectively is incapable of fighting during that movement mode/while flying.

I'm reasonably sure that fighting in armour you don't know how to use only gives you a -2 to attack and reflex defence, for comparison. -4 is enormous.
Given your chances of surviving such a penalty, I almost fail to see the point of having been raised. 3 milestones can last a good long time, depending on your game and shear amount of free-time.

ericgrau
2009-09-01, 06:19 PM
On rolls that succeed most of the time, a -4 makes them succeed about half the time. Typically that applies only to your specialty.
On rolls that succeed half the time, a -4 makes them succeed about 1/4 of the time. That's most rolls.
On rolls that succeed 1/4 of the time, a -4 makes them succeed only on a nat 20. That's things that were already quite hard.

In short, yeah, this rule is majorly gimping the player for 3 milestones. He's so-so at what he was good at, half as effective as other PCs at everything else, and for the really hard stuff just forget it.

Here's a similar option: If you die, sit out for 1-2 milestones and don't play. Pretty lame, isn't it? But IMO having minimal impact on the game for 3 milestones is just as bad. Maybe worse, b/c that -4 could easily kill you again. I think your DM is going too far. I'd suggest a -2 and explain to him why a -2 is already huge and a -1 is still big, for reasons similar to the above. A -2 will already be quite painful and will discourage people from dying recklessly, but at least your character will be playable.

Xenogears
2009-09-01, 06:37 PM
How about removing all Death Penalties, and instead make death a lot harder to recover from? I'm talking, remove Resurrection and all variants, and make a deity granted quest necessary to persuade them to wrench them back to the mortal realm. Give the character control of an NPC (Or, if they have one, a backup character) for the few sessions until they get their character back.

I think it would be more interesting if the Diety revived the character and THEN forced the quest on them. If they don't do it the character can never be revivd again. This way they can use the character but still have a penalty. To make it more fair have the diety rule that the newly revived character can't get any loot (the other players can and everyone gets XP) or something like that...

Skorj
2009-09-01, 06:55 PM
Look, there are only death 3 penalties you can impose in any game:

The player leaves the group.
The player brings in a new character (which if frequent sabotages immersion).
The death penalty is shallow and fairly easy to recover from.


If 3 is not true, 1 or 2 will be true. It's a game. Even if you want to punish the players for character death, you can't - they can just do somehting else.

Sinfire Titan
2009-09-01, 06:59 PM
In the event a PC dies, we will be using slightly modified Death Penalty rules. Instead of the normal -1 to attack/skill/save/ability checks until 3 milestones, the penalty is increased to -4.

This is the major deal-breaker. So many encounters have abilities that have [Save Ends] tags that this reduces your odds of saving from 50% to 30%, AKA you only save on a 14+ instead of 10+.

-4 is massive in 4E; it's comparable to a -8 penalty to everything in 3.5 (considering bonuses are easier to accumulate in 3.5, this is more or less accurate). A -4 to attack rolls means even Minions (who have decent defenses to begin with) now pose the same threat Elites do, minus HP. A -4 to Skill checks means Skill Challenges are nigh impossible for that PC (and they were abysmal to begin with). A -4 to Ability checks won't come up much, but when it does the penalty spells "FAILURE" in size 50 font.

But the -4 saves? Be prepared to cough up another Raise Dead. And take the penalty again. 3 milestones with a -4 to everything and no rest for recharging powers is unforgiving in 4E, you more or less have to be using abilities like Wall of Fire just to survive that long. For the record, this is a list of the creatures with [Save Ends} somewhere in their stat block, from the 1st MM alone:

Aboleth Lasher
Aboleth Slime Mage
Aboleth Overseer
Astral Stalker
Atropal
Blood Fiend
Phane
Tarrasque
Every single Archon (6 total)
All 5 Azers
Banshrae Dartswarmer
Both Basilisks (duh, 2)
Fire Bat
Tangler Beetle
Rot Scarab Swarm
Bloodspike Behemoth
Both Beholders (2)
Berbalang
Bodak Reaver
Cambion Hellfire Magus
Both Carrion Crawlers (2)
Chimera
Feygrove Choker
Both Chuuls (2)
Godforged Colossus
Cyclops Impaler
Cyclops Battleweaver (technically)
Cyclops Storm Shaman
Dark Creeper
Dark Stalker
Balor
Immolith
Mezzodemon
Vrock
Destrachan
Destrachan Far Voice

I'm 60 pages into the 1st MM. There is currently a total of 48 creatures with an ability that has [Save Ends]. There's a total of 267 pages printed with encounters (give or take). At this rate, about 80% of the 1st Monster Manual will be able to kill a character trying to get through 3 Milestones with a -4 penalty to Saves alone.




In short, your DM should not implement this rule. EVER.

Foryn Gilnith
2009-09-01, 07:09 PM
A large increase in severity is, as demonstrated, bad; but a moderate increase in severity and duration could work. Perhaps -2 until two milestones are passed, and then -1 until two more milestones are passed (or one more, if you want to keep the 3-milestone duration)