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Choco
2010-02-17, 09:24 AM
So I am in the process of converting a homebrew setting to 4e, and one of the key things about the setting is that death is permanent. So before I just go and arbitrarily remove the rituals/potions/etc that revive characters, I would basically like to know if the higher level encounters (especially epic tier where you get potions that instantly revive you in battle) take reviving into account and will have to be de-leveled.

I can tell that at heroic and paragon tiers the HP of the party fluctuates heavily from near TPK to full health constantly, but have not played/DM'd epic tier all that much. My fear is that I will remove the various revivification potions and such just to find out some monsters/encounters count on you having them...

BobTheDog
2010-02-17, 09:40 AM
Well, eliminating reviving completely is a problem as levels go up, since as you said the game counts on some ability of the players to cheat death.

But, without even homebrewing, the game also says that the raise dead ritual is not 100% effective. Sometimes the soul has moved on, doesn't want to return or is prevented from doing so.

I would suggest that you do that (further reduce raise dead efficiency) if you want to keep a feeling of permanent death, but allow really high level abilities (high paragon/epic) to work. I mean, most of those "when you die" abilities could be refluffed as "near-death" situations.

Tiki Snakes
2010-02-17, 09:41 AM
I don't expect it to be a large problem, to be quite honest. Lose the appropriate rituals, and so on. (But leave any epic tier related coming-back-from-the-dead stuff in place, it's inherant to the tier pretty much)

I don't remember much in the way of reincarnation-potions, but I can't imagine it'd be any different from removing the rituals.

If this is coupled with more realistic enemy behaviour (Ie, if it's willing to fight to the death it's either already dead, or it's mad, or it's scarily disciplined. Definately the exception, reguardless) then it could be pretty good. If the enemies the party face are reacting appropriatetly to the rules of the world, and acting with an appropriate dread of death, then the PC's should be more than capable of doing so as well.

You should be careful to not always have the pc's backs to the wall, though. If every fight for the PC's must be won, or die trying, it could end up being problematic.

Ravens_cry
2010-02-17, 09:47 AM
Well, here's a problem I see with this. Now it is true wholesale resurrections, to the point that heaven has a revolving door, do cheapen death. But the other extreme also cheapens the experience. If there's is no chance your character is going to come back, then why care about them? Why get attached and expand your character to a character who is all too likely to just kick the bucket? It can become an endless litany of Bob, Bob jr, Bob III, et cetera..

Choco
2010-02-17, 09:51 AM
I don't expect it to be a large problem, to be quite honest. Lose the appropriate rituals, and so on. (But leave any epic tier related coming-back-from-the-dead stuff in place, it's inherant to the tier pretty much)

I don't remember much in the way of reincarnation-potions, but I can't imagine it'd be any different from removing the rituals.

If this is coupled with more realistic enemy behaviour (Ie, if it's willing to fight to the death it's either already dead, or it's mad, or it's scarily disciplined. Definately the exception, reguardless) then it could be pretty good. If the enemies the party face are reacting appropriatetly to the rules of the world, and acting with an appropriate dread of death, then the PC's should be more than capable of doing so as well.

You should be careful to not always have the pc's backs to the wall, though. If every fight for the PC's must be won, or die trying, it could end up being problematic.

I actually thought of that. Even in my normal 3.5 games I try to play sentient enemies as actually having a fear of death (lets face it, even if the game lets you revive, the random mooks know no one will waste the thousands of gold on them when the villain can just hire another faceless thug).

About the potions, they have a potions at the mid-late Epic tier that is an instant resurrection even in the middle of combat (kinda like WoW) but with the drawback of the character being dazed till the end of the encounter. That is the main reason I am concerned to be honest, because rituals that must be performed out of combat to revive someone likely have no effect on encounter CR and design, but once you throw in an item that lets you revive in combat things get sticky.


Well, eliminating reviving completely is a problem as levels go up, since as you said the game counts on some ability of the players to cheat death.

But, without even homebrewing, the game also says that the raise dead ritual is not 100% effective. Sometimes the soul has moved on, doesn't want to return or is prevented from doing so.

I would suggest that you do that (further reduce raise dead efficiency) if you want to keep a feeling of permanent death, but allow really high level abilities (high paragon/epic) to work. I mean, most of those "when you die" abilities could be refluffed as "near-death" situations.

I was actually considering something like the Naruto D20 game had. That system also had death as being mostly permanent, but as long as someone could cast a (very high level) stasis-like spell (or jutsu, whatever..) on your body within 1 round of you dying, you could then be brought back to life later using another very high level and expensive spell.

Perhaps turn the insta-revive potions into some stasis potions and then create a ritual of the same level as the potion that revives the character? However, even doing that I still got the problem of combats maybe being planned with revival in combat in mind. The more I think about it, the more it seems that trial and error (AKA playtestin :smallbiggrin:) is probably the only way to do this right.


Well, here's a problem I see with this. Now it is true wholesale resurrections, to the point that heaven has a revolving door, do cheapen death. But the other extreme also cheapens the experience. If there's is no chance your character is going to come back, then why care about them? Why get attached and expand your character to a character who is all too likely to just kick the bucket? It can become an endless litany of Bob, Bob jr, Bob III, et cetera..

It doesnt so much cheapen the experience as actually make you play as if you have a fear of dying. I played in a lot of D20 modern games and death is of course permanent in the vast majority of them, and while it may sting to lose a character it adds to dramatic effect and forces you to play as if your life is worth something. In regular 3.5 D&D I have heard something similar to "I am gonna do <x>, I will probably die but y'all can just bring me back later" quite often...

Ravens_cry
2010-02-17, 10:12 AM
It doesnt so much cheapen the experience as actually make you play as if you have a fear of dying. I played in a lot of D20 modern games and death is of course permanent in the vast majority of them, and while it may sting to lose a character it adds to dramatic effect and forces you to play as if your life is worth something. In regular 3.5 D&D I have heard something similar to "I am gonna do <x>, I will probably die but y'all can just bring me back later" quite often...
Exactly, it encourages risk taking, encourages experimentation. I am still not seeing the bad.

Choco
2010-02-17, 10:38 AM
Exactly, it encourages risk taking, encourages experimentation. I am still not seeing the bad.

Of course not, because we clearly have different play styles :smalltongue:.

I got nothing against bringing characters back from the dead, even if it is extremely easy, but on occasion something different is good. Like the difference between Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun. Hmm, maybe I should wait until Dark Sun to finish this conversion, I am sure they will make it all but impossible to bring a character back from the dead...

My view is that the risks you take knowing you may not make it out alive are all the more epic and mean a lot more because of it.

Ravens_cry
2010-02-17, 10:52 AM
Of course not, because we clearly have different play styles :smalltongue:.

I got nothing against bringing characters back from the dead, even if it is extremely easy, but on occasion something different is good. Like the difference between Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun. Hmm, maybe I should wait until Dark Sun to finish this conversion, I am sure they will make it all but impossible to bring a character back from the dead...

My view is that the risks you take knowing you may not make it out alive are all the more epic and mean a lot more because of it.
Well yes, I suppose we do. It's hardly epic to me for your character to die from a bad roll of the dice, whom you built from level 1, who had plans, who had family, was fleshed out into a true alternate persona, to die because Monster #3486 got lucky. I am not saying it should be easy. But NO ressurection can lead to Pile o' Dead Bards Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorkness_Rising), in my opinion. This is a player perspective mind you, from being the newbie who went through characters like toilet paper.
Your group may indeed find this adds to the fun, but be sure to tell them first. This a major change to the rules and I would hate for a DM to just spring it on me.

Sipex
2010-02-17, 10:55 AM
I think you're okay removing the ritual, but any paragon/epic features or feats that allow the cheating of death should remain as they are I believe.

Arch mage epic destiny, for example, allows a wizard to become a spirit after hitting 0 HP. Spirit form recovers ALL HP and can act as the normal wizard but can't cast dailies (at-will and encounter powers are fine). At the end of an encounter the spirit rejoins the body and transfers it's HP over. If the spirit dies, it's dead, no saving throws.

Tiki Snakes
2010-02-17, 10:57 AM
I think you're okay removing the ritual, but any paragon/epic features or feats that allow the cheating of death should remain as they are I believe.

Arch mage epic destiny, for example, allows a wizard to become a spirit after hitting 0 HP. Spirit form recovers ALL HP and can act as the normal wizard but can't cast dailies (at-will and encounter powers are fine). At the end of an encounter the spirit rejoins the body and transfers it's HP over. If the spirit dies, it's dead, no saving throws.

I particularly enjoy the Feyliege's version, where if you fall in combat, your future self appears to finish the fight for you, raising you back to life at the end of the encounter.

valadil
2010-02-17, 11:05 AM
I don't like cheapening death either. The way I've dealt with in the past (though never in 4e) is by reducing some death effects to knocked out or comatose effects. You can be brought back from those. "Raise dead" was reflavored to "remove coma" but it was functionally equivalent, except in cases where someone was dead as a doornail.

Another idea I had was to rip off Dragon Age: Origins. If your character falls in combat they get an injury which lasts until healed. This is pretty similar to the death penalty recieved in 4e. I figure that instead of a generic -1 you could give the player a broken arm or bruised kidney that gives more painful, but specific penalties. Flavorwise this works well with changing death to knocked out or comatose. And it still lets you kill off people for real if you want to be brutal about it.

Choco
2010-02-17, 11:05 AM
Well yes, I suppose we do. It's hardly epic to me for your character to die from a bad roll of the dice, whom you built from level 1, who had plans, who had family, was fleshed out into a true alternate persona, to die because Monster #3486 got lucky. I am not saying it should be easy. But NO ressurection can lead to Pile o' Dead Bards Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorkness_Rising), in my opinion. This is a player perspective mind you, from being the newbie who went through characters like toilet paper.
Your group may indeed find this adds to the fun, but be sure to tell them first. This a major change to the rules and I would hate for a DM to just spring it on me.

Oh it aint a surprise, it is a setting I used before in 3.5. Our group alternates DM's and settings often, going from all the big 3.5 campaign settings to various homebew to D20 modern/future etc. In the case of homebrew settings, it is assumed everything functions just like the core books specify unless noted otherwise, so in this case "permanent death" is a fairly major note on the campaign handout.

As for the epic features, I was not planning on touching those. I figure the designers added "cheat death" as a feature for a damn good reason, perhaps to balance out some other weakness in that epic destiny when compared to others.

Vitruviansquid
2010-02-17, 01:06 PM
You may just houserule the death rules instead of the reincarnation rules. Houserule such that, when a player goes down, he is incapacitated, but still able to get back in the fight. When he gets his third strike, then he has suffered some kind of major injury or lost enough blood that he wouldn't be able to fight for the rest of the encounter or perhaps for a number of days or weeks decided by the DM.

Mando Knight
2010-02-17, 02:46 PM
I think you're okay removing the ritual, but any paragon/epic features or feats that allow the cheating of death should remain as they are I believe.

IMO, that's fine. Axing the Raise Dead ritual, or at least making it a special case among special cases, would emphasize the abilities of the heroes in their struggle against not dying. Removing Epic-tier abilities to not-die is plain old mean, since they're epic. They've earned the right to just kick death in the face and shout "I'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!" if they've gotten that far.

Yakk
2010-02-17, 02:59 PM
There are a few creatures who have death effects.

You could avoid using them.

If you leave the epic tier "once per day, I come back from the dead" features (which are a balancing concern between epic destinies, and are often rather cool), I think the game would remain playable.

Choco
2010-02-17, 03:16 PM
There are a few creatures who have death effects.

You could avoid using them.

If you leave the epic tier "once per day, I come back from the dead" features (which are a balancing concern between epic destinies, and are often rather cool), I think the game would remain playable.

That is my hope. Just like when I did this in 3.5 I will of course either remove all (read: most :smallamused:) death effects or make them instantly drop you to -1 as opposed to killing you.

randomhero00
2010-02-17, 03:29 PM
If the "death is permanent" thing is purely fluff reasons you could replace the revive potions with mechanically same stuff. Make them little magical pearls you swallow ahead of time that have contingent heal spells on them or something so that when you reach 1 hp you get a full heal instead of dieing. Or whatever is appropriate to your setting. Same power level but death can still be permanent.

Choco
2010-02-17, 03:47 PM
If the "death is permanent" thing is purely fluff reasons you could replace the revive potions with mechanically same stuff. Make them little magical pearls you swallow ahead of time that have contingent heal spells on them or something so that when you reach 1 hp you get a full heal instead of dieing. Or whatever is appropriate to your setting. Same power level but death can still be permanent.

Well thing is I want it to be more than just fluff, I actually want the sense of danger to kinda go up. We coming out of a very high power, high fantasy game with ressurrections thrown around left and right, so we changing pace.

I don't think it will be that big a deal overall, cause it is WAY harder to die in 4e than it was in 3.5, but in the situations where there is actual danger the party should feel it :smallamused:.

LibraryOgre
2010-02-17, 04:08 PM
Not really been a problem with our group; our Character ADD is severe enough that by the time someone actually dies, we're usually ready to bring in a new character, anyway.

AgentPaper
2010-02-17, 04:23 PM
One Epic Destiny you'll probably want to nix would be Dark Wanderer, which essentially lets you walk off death.

Juk
2010-02-18, 06:55 PM
Well yes, I suppose we do. It's hardly epic to me for your character to die from a bad roll of the dice, whom you built from level 1, who had plans, who had family, was fleshed out into a true alternate persona, to die because Monster #3486 got lucky. I am not saying it should be easy. But NO ressurection can lead to Pile o' Dead Bards Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorkness_Rising), in my opinion. This is a player perspective mind you, from being the newbie who went through characters like toilet paper.
Your group may indeed find this adds to the fun, but be sure to tell them first. This a major change to the rules and I would hate for a DM to just spring it on me.
I think this sort of sums up a big stylistic dividing point among players, dm's and campaigns. Many players feel too heavily invested in their pc's to have them potentially killed off and others feel that having a real possibility of death adds to the quality of the game. I'm squarely in the latter camp but that doesn't mean that players who want to be resurrected from every death are "wrong". My personal perspective is that without the very real possibility of death there's really no satisfaction in making levels, finishing missions, etc. Someone above posted that players have said something to the effect "I'll try this and if I die you guys can resurrect me". What's the point of a game like that? Sort of an exercise in dice rolling since the outcome is a foregone conclusion. I play and DM in campaigns that are much more "gritty" and dangerous than what might be the norm and personally I like it that way. When my pc enters an encounter he thinks about escape routes, the relative strengths of the protagonists and what he can do to make sure he and his friends survive if things go badly. One bad die roll rarely kills anyone, even a streak of bad luck rarely kills anyone in 4e but bad decisions and failure to understand/recognize when you're not winning can surely get you killed. If you understand you're in grave danger yet you continue to press your luck you have to assume that the logical conclusion could be your untimely demise. This gives a very real sense of tension and excitement to each encounter which IMHO adds greatly to the games enjoyment. Even in the instances of a TPK which has happened twice in the last 6 campaigns my group has run we often talk about it after and get enjoyment from the epic/heroic nature of the encounter. I get attached to my pc's just like the next guy but rolling up a new pc to join a party is not the end of the world. The biggest penalty in our campaigns is that new pc's start about 1/2 level behind the group average in exp. On the other hand, you get to try out a new role/class/race.

Death is good and without it the game loses much of it's appeal in terms of success based satisfaction. When a party of 4 level 2 pc's walks into a crypt and sees 3 ghouls, (an N+2 encounter featuring L+3 monsters) I want them to think "oh ****". Beat those ghouls and the party will definitely have had a bonding moment and feel a strong sense of accomplishment. Lose two pc's and have two flee the scene as the ghouls gnaw on their comrades and the players will still think of the experience as an epic battle.

On the raise dead front, it's rare in our campaigns that the pc's have much money in their pockets. Healing potions and magic items eat up a massive proportion of the party's funds in our campaigns. The paragon cost of a raise dead spell is 5000gp. Since raise dead is an 8th level ritual and the first level above 8 where pc's learn new rituals is 11, you're likely talking about a relatively expensive spell. If you stay in line with the suggested rewards from the dmg it's somewhat difficult for pc's to build up huge amounts of cash AND try and maintain pace with monster level advancement bonuses. PC's our campaigns are frequently broke or nearly broke because if they manage to scrape together a lump of cash there's always some magic item they need in order to stay competitive with the bad guys.

Lastly, you can always house rule a chance of failure into the raise dead (think con check from past versions) and/or limit the number of times any pc can be resurrected. Which brings up an interesting tangent - would Deva's fear death in 4e?

Choco
2010-02-19, 09:34 AM
I think this sort of sums up a big stylistic dividing point among players, dm's and campaigns. Many players feel too heavily invested in their pc's to have them potentially killed off and others feel that having a real possibility of death adds to the quality of the game. I'm squarely in the latter camp but that doesn't mean that players who want to be resurrected from every death are "wrong". My personal perspective is that without the very real possibility of death there's really no satisfaction in making levels, finishing missions, etc. Someone above posted that players have said something to the effect "I'll try this and if I die you guys can resurrect me". What's the point of a game like that? Sort of an exercise in dice rolling since the outcome is a foregone conclusion. I play and DM in campaigns that are much more "gritty" and dangerous than what might be the norm and personally I like it that way. When my pc enters an encounter he thinks about escape routes, the relative strengths of the protagonists and what he can do to make sure he and his friends survive if things go badly. One bad die roll rarely kills anyone, even a streak of bad luck rarely kills anyone in 4e but bad decisions and failure to understand/recognize when you're not winning can surely get you killed. If you understand you're in grave danger yet you continue to press your luck you have to assume that the logical conclusion could be your untimely demise. This gives a very real sense of tension and excitement to each encounter which IMHO adds greatly to the games enjoyment. Even in the instances of a TPK which has happened twice in the last 6 campaigns my group has run we often talk about it after and get enjoyment from the epic/heroic nature of the encounter. I get attached to my pc's just like the next guy but rolling up a new pc to join a party is not the end of the world. The biggest penalty in our campaigns is that new pc's start about 1/2 level behind the group average in exp. On the other hand, you get to try out a new role/class/race.

Death is good and without it the game loses much of it's appeal in terms of success based satisfaction. When a party of 4 level 2 pc's walks into a crypt and sees 3 ghouls, (an N+2 encounter featuring L+3 monsters) I want them to think "oh ****". Beat those ghouls and the party will definitely have had a bonding moment and feel a strong sense of accomplishment. Lose two pc's and have two flee the scene as the ghouls gnaw on their comrades and the players will still think of the experience as an epic battle.

On the raise dead front, it's rare in our campaigns that the pc's have much money in their pockets. Healing potions and magic items eat up a massive proportion of the party's funds in our campaigns. The paragon cost of a raise dead spell is 5000gp. Since raise dead is an 8th level ritual and the first level above 8 where pc's learn new rituals is 11, you're likely talking about a relatively expensive spell. If you stay in line with the suggested rewards from the dmg it's somewhat difficult for pc's to build up huge amounts of cash AND try and maintain pace with monster level advancement bonuses. PC's our campaigns are frequently broke or nearly broke because if they manage to scrape together a lump of cash there's always some magic item they need in order to stay competitive with the bad guys.

Lastly, you can always house rule a chance of failure into the raise dead (think con check from past versions) and/or limit the number of times any pc can be resurrected. Which brings up an interesting tangent - would Deva's fear death in 4e?

That basically sums up how I feel as well.

The point about resurrections being expensive is definitely a good one, perhaps those instant-revival potions that appear in epic levels were not considered when designing encounters after all, since it is unlikely they will come up all that often. I should be safe removing them.

I don't much like giving a fail chance to a raise dead spell, but maybe if someone REALLY wants to desperately revive a character I could do a multi-session epic quest to get the character revived via plot mechanics (with the player of the dead character probably taking over some companion character NPC until their original character is back). That should give enough motivation to avoid death, especially if said plot device only can be used once per character for instance.

I think Devas would still fear death, because when they come back in their new body they are basically a completely new/different person with a few scattered memories of their past lives remaining. That is only a LITTLE bit better than not coming back in any way at all. A Deva player better fear death, because Devas are not Rakshasas (yet...), they do not keep all their memories and abilities when they come back, they come back as a lvl 1 (pick any class) and have to start over :smalltongue:.

Tiki Snakes
2010-02-19, 10:13 AM
Anyone wondering about if Deva's fear death should take a look at the last Doctor Who Christmas Special.

"I don't want to die!"

Juk
2010-02-19, 07:19 PM
I don't much like giving a fail chance to a raise dead spell, but maybe if someone REALLY wants to desperately revive a character I could do a multi-session epic quest to get the character revived via plot mechanics (with the player of the dead character probably taking over some companion character NPC until their original character is back). That should give enough motivation to avoid death, especially if said plot device only can be used once per character for instance.In the last 3.5 campaign we played before moving to 4e we had a pc petrified at level 2-3'ish in a remote cave atop a mountain range that divided the civilized lands from the "goblinoid areas" of the world. We happened to be on a quest that involved a goblin alchemical genius who was sort of the golden goose for a band of goblin raiders who inhabited the fringe areas between the goblins and civilized areas. We normally would have lost that pc but the goblin alchemist had a recipe for an ointment that could be rubbed on a petrified creature and give him a con check to survive. We went on a side quest over multiple sessions to ge the ingredients for the ointment, including nearly losing 2 other pc's. The pc failed his 17 con check and we still joke about his horrible luck today. Point being is resurrection is very rare for low level characters and that's ok. Even at high levels it should not be automatic or at least that's my perception. I mostly play lower level campaigns that start at level 1 and work at most into paragon areas so my perspective might be different but having the rare raise dead situation be quest driven is very good for the campaign and makes it much more meaningful.


I think Devas would still fear death, because when they come back in their new body they are basically a completely new/different person with a few scattered memories of their past lives remaining. That is only a LITTLE bit better than not coming back in any way at all. A Deva player better fear death, because Devas are not Rakshasas (yet...), they do not keep all their memories and abilities when they come back, they come back as a lvl 1 (pick any class) and have to start over :smalltongue:.I think they would not want to die but men in combat regularly jump on a grenade to save their comrades. How much easier to jump on a grenade if you know that tomorrow you're gonna wake up on a hill top as an adult with some memory of who you were and how you died to save your friends?

Roderick_BR
2010-02-19, 08:56 PM
I actually thought of that. Even in my normal 3.5 games I try to play sentient enemies as actually having a fear of death (lets face it, even if the game lets you revive, the random mooks know no one will waste the thousands of gold on them when the villain can just hire another faceless thug).
Yeah. AD&D actually had rules for that (crap, can't remember the name now), to see if the mooks would still be willing to fight after losing their leader, their stronger ally, having half of their numbers wiped...

For the OP: I was told (didn't finish reading it) that the ressurrection rituals are hard enough on 4e. Maybe just make it available at epic tier? Maybe put a limit on how many times they can do it (like requiring a rare material that they only have a few pieces of).

Tiki Snakes
2010-02-19, 09:16 PM
Yeah. AD&D actually had rules for that (crap, can't remember the name now), to see if the mooks would still be willing to fight after losing their leader, their stronger ally, having half of their numbers wiped...

For the OP: I was told (didn't finish reading it) that the ressurrection rituals are hard enough on 4e. Maybe just make it available at epic tier? Maybe put a limit on how many times they can do it (like requiring a rare material that they only have a few pieces of).

Or, depending on your players, make it unpalatable in some way.

Like, every time you use it, the soul wears a little thinner. Eventually, when you try it, something comes through and animates the body, but it isn't you anymore. PC becomes horrible, evil npc. For bonus points, base it on the highest of Wis or cha mod, (without level bonus) and don't actually tell anyone, so that there's a sense of not really ever being sure if it'll bring them back or instead let something else through...

OR

Every time you are ressurected via the ritual, you lose 10 years of your life.
Or you loose memories, particularly treasured ones. I have a player who would probably consider either of these things as pretty horrifying.

Inyssius Tor
2010-02-19, 09:55 PM
As for the epic features, I was not planning on touching those. I figure the designers added "cheat death" as a feature for a damn good reason, perhaps to balance out some other weakness in that epic destiny when compared to others.

Yeah. Removing those would mess things up.

Other than that, there will be no problems whatsoever. Until the very high epic levels, I believe, the only thing you'll have to change is the existence of the Raise Dead ritual.

Brendan
2010-02-19, 11:17 PM
Yeah. AD&D actually had rules for that (crap, can't remember the name now), to see if the mooks would still be willing to fight after losing their leader, their stronger ally, having half of their numbers wiped...

Well... yeah. but adnd had rules on whether you would get lice or not from sleeping on an unclean bed. They made rules for everything.

Shardan
2010-02-19, 11:47 PM
Morale (there were even illusion spells that were meant just to scare things into running away)

Zombimode
2010-02-20, 05:34 AM
Well... yeah. but adnd had rules on whether you would get lice or not from sleeping on an unclean bed. They made rules for everything.

?
Those dont apear in my AD&D 2e books, Ive checked.
Maybe your misremembering or think of another ruleset?

But yes, the morale system. A VERY useful tool.
I use it all the time.

I never understood why it was removed in later editions.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-02-20, 06:13 AM
In 3.5, my homebrew setting had no resurrection magic.
I made the various death effects (from spells, massive damage and other stuff) work like this:

If the effect allows a save: a failed save means you are on -1 HP, unconscious and dying.
If the effect has no save: make a Fort save as if a save were allowed. If you fail, you are dead. If you succeed, you are reduced to -1 HP, unconscious and dying.

Reluctance
2010-02-20, 11:03 AM
If you want a low-powered, less fantastic game, say that the game ends at 20 or even 10. Epic play may not be as over the top as high-level 3.5 play was, but you're still basically superheroes.

If you're looking for a good way to let the dead come back without having your players treat it casually, simply say that the ritual also requires the soul of the departed to be on hand. That means that anybody wanting to bring back the dead either has to have the intervention of a deity, or else they have to physically travel to the afterlife. Both are suitably flavorful, and both make resurrection require more work than merely piling together a lot of incense.

As for the powers/ED features that can bring back the dead, I say let them stand. As mentioned above, epic is when you're a superhero. How often do they see death as just a temporary inconvenience?

Juk
2010-02-20, 03:13 PM
I'm not a big fan of the whole "superhero" concept. Even mythological heroes sometimes died (though some of them returned from the dead as well). Equating pc's to mythological heroes sort of changes the flavor of the game. My personal perspective is I don't want to play an immortal demigod role in my dnd. There's certainly room for games where being a demigod is part of the mix and DND had touched on this during the various versions through the years but I think it's really a different game than 99% of dnd. Even at high levels PC's should never become invulnerable to death. Odysseus died at the hands of his son Telegonus. Hercules who was a demigod died from poisoned blood from the centaur (the poison ironically came from Hercules own arrow when he killed the centaur in the first place). Hercules had returned from the dead once before (after capturing Cerberus) so he already proved he could return from the land of the dead. My point being that death should be a constant companion in DnD because it's really the way we measure success to some degree. All the rewards in the dnd world don't really have meaning unless you have something to measure it against. The alternative to success in DnD is frequently unpleasant(slavery, prison, death, petrification, disintegration, dismemberment etc) some of them are reversible and some of them less so.

I don't love the old ways with instant death, I think in AD&D or first edition DnD there was a pre-built module called tomb of horrors that had an instant death trap with no save. I remember this well because my 12th level fighter was killed there with no save and no chance of resurrection. I admit that sort of sucked (I definitely don't advocate any sort of instant death in DnD), but without the chance of this unpleasantness there's really little point to the game, it really becomes more of an exercise in group creative fiction. Creative fiction is great and group creative fiction is cool also but DnD is an RPG not a creative writing seminar. Being the Superbowl champ in a one team league is pretty hollow.