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Beelzebub1111
2010-06-13, 10:00 AM
What do you do when a Player's Character dies with no resurrection available? You can't exactly kick them out of the game forever. How long is enough to sit out? What grounds for making new characters, like what level should they be and should they have less than standard magic items, since the rest of the party still has "Their" items.

Glyde
2010-06-13, 10:03 AM
Usually, if there is no ressurection available, create a new character in the meantime. If they really want to ressurect the dead character, make it a quest.


As an example, my now-saint cleric turned herself to stone to stop a crushing wall trap. No ressurection was available (DM ruled that we needed wish since she did it to herself, yay). In the meantime, I played an old man kung-fu VoP swordsage thing, that was actually a celestial sent to watch over and observe the people that she was travelng with - To see if they were worthy enough to have the old character come back. Ended up that one of the characters had fallen in love with her and whipped the party into shape. They were pretty uh... Morally gray.

They had to find a 'contract' thing in order to get her back. Of course, that involved signing the love interest's soul away and that was a quest in and of itself.

loopy
2010-06-13, 10:08 AM
My two rules:

1) Unless they are dying due to their own stupidity, characters should always get one final moment of awesome. Takes some of the sadness out of dying, and can make a session memorable.
2) Players should not be penalised for a character death. Introduce a new character as soon as is convenient to the story. (I, however, personally shy away from the "oh look, someone has been captured in the next room of the dungeon" method of introducing characters)

Gnaritas
2010-06-13, 10:10 AM
When a character dies and he is not being resurrected, we let the player create a new character one level lower than he was (with the appropriate WBL). We take into account that if a player had 12.500 xp (level 5 but halfway level 6) he becomes level 4, halfway level 5 (8.000 xp).

oxybe
2010-06-13, 10:15 AM
new character comes back at same XP total as old character using standard creation rules.

penalizing a player because he rolled a 3 on a fort save is silly and i honestly never understood why: his character is dead, he has to sit out part of the game so let's kick him one more time since he's down and start him off weaker then rest. hooray?

Protecar
2010-06-13, 10:22 AM
new character comes back at same XP total as old character using standard creation rules.

penalizing a player because he rolled a 3 on a fort save is silly and i honestly never understood why: his character is dead, he has to sit out part of the game so let's kick him one more time since he's down and start him off weaker then rest. hooray?

+1 to this: There are two kinds of character deaths: when they want to die and when they don't.

When they want to, it's because it's a shining moment to their cause as that character or they want a new story(character) to play.

The second is when they don't want to see that character go, but as in life, such events happen.

I also think that a level penalty is salt in the wounds of a lost character(whether experience is being a river or not).

Also, I like the idea of having a dying character receive a last moment of awesome. :smallbiggrin:

true_shinken
2010-06-13, 10:23 AM
new character comes back at same XP total as old character using standard creation rules.

penalizing a player because he rolled a 3 on a fort save is silly and i honestly never understood why: his character is dead, he has to sit out part of the game so let's kick him one more time since he's down and start him off weaker then rest. hooray?

This. I completly agree.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-06-13, 10:29 AM
This. I completly agree.

On the other hand, if dying and coming back means you lose a level and creating a new character means your the same level. Some PC's might feel inclined just to create a new character.

Thus I have the effects of creating a new character be the same as bringing back the old one, your level is lower.

Beelzebub1111
2010-06-13, 10:31 AM
The problem is that our group had "Exploited" this a few times. One player flung his character at a great wurm black dragon because he didn't like how he was punished for breaking his deity's code and didn't like the quest that he was on, instead of talking to the DM about his issues.

How does one handle that?

Not to mention that if you just give a new character what fear is there of death? There has to be some sort of penalty.

2xMachina
2010-06-13, 10:41 AM
Not to mention that if you just give a new character what fear is there of death? There has to be some sort of penalty.

Kill the player? :smallwink:

Well, I think having to build a new char, and think up a way to get back in to the party is work enough that it can be considered penalty.

No: Look, his twin brother with the exact same build suddenly appears. "Alas, my fallen brother. I shall replace him".

oxybe
2010-06-13, 11:39 AM
The problem is that our group had "Exploited" this a few times. One player flung his character at a great wurm black dragon because he didn't like how he was punished for breaking his deity's code and didn't like the quest that he was on, instead of talking to the DM about his issues.

How does one handle that?

Not to mention that if you just give a new character what fear is there of death? There has to be some sort of penalty.

as for your player, i'm sorry he couldn't bring it up in a mature manner, but that's a completely different issue then the one at hand and goes much deeper then "fear of death".

even without the general ease of access to revival spells, the fear of death doesn't properly exist though. it cannot exist properly. a player can always opt to reroll a new character and a GM can't force a player to keep playing the PC he doesn't want to. if the player doesn't want to play a PC the GM is forcing him to, he can always just up and leave.

the only thing the player really loses upon PC death is time since he he's sitting on the sidelines. his character is also lost, but he may or may not be attached to it, which is a key issue.

if the player isn't attached to a character, death has no fear attached. death is only as scary as the player is attached to his PC. i've played plenty of throwaway PCs with no fear of death at all, mostly due to how much of a meatgrinder some of those games were, but death had 0 effect on me.

the last time i died was in a high level game. due to in-game time constraints we couldn't immediately revive my pc (we were in another plane, no ressurections prepared or even the diamonds on hand). our caster only had his combat spells prepared and this player isn't known for stocking up on scrolls. or even utility wands :smallannoyed:. and he was the cleric.

so i sat out half of one session and got revived at the end of the second session. how did i die? spot check 2, fort save (3 on a d20+16mod) 19 VS finger of death. so exciting!

i got back at full capacity, minus several fists of platinum (which were traded for diamonds), but i still had to sit out most of 2 sessions. this is one reason why i like the resurrection rules of 4th ed and i'm not too fond of the low level res options in 3rd and previous: it doesn't kick a player who's already lost his pc and had to sit out the gist of a session.

you want to put the fear of death in a player? make failure a horrible option. fail to stop the orcs? they'll rape and pillage the idyllic country villages. fail to stop the necromancer? he'll murder and raise the villagers as zombies and continue onwards. fail to stop the warlord? the country will be thrown in an era of warfare, slavery & strife. fail to stop the dragon from eating the princess? the kingdom's power structure is thrown in disarray as branch families all vie for the monarchy.

that's the real fear of death. not "lose exp until you're halfway to your current level" but coming back to life in a world much worse off then when you left.

Beelzebub1111
2010-06-13, 12:05 PM
you want to put the fear of death in a player? make failure a horrible option. fail to stop the orcs? they'll rape and pillage the idyllic country villages. fail to stop the necromancer? he'll murder and raise the villagers as zombies and continue onwards. fail to stop the warlord? the country will be thrown in an era of warfare, slavery & strife. fail to stop the dragon from eating the princess? the kingdom's power structure is thrown in disarray as branch families all vie for the monarchy.
I wish that my fellow players could immerse themselves in such a way. The only thing that most of them seem to care about are pluses and their precious magic items.

oxybe
2010-06-13, 12:18 PM
I wish that my fellow players could immerse themselves in such a way. The only thing that most of them seem to care about are pluses and their precious magic items.

like i said earlier in my post:

if the player isn't attached to a character, death has no fear attached. death is only as scary as the player is attached to his PC.

if a player's only attachment to his PC is the numbers on the sheet, then i doubt they would care about whether they need to roll up a new one or wait for a revival.

your best option is to ask the players what they want. if it's a character i like, i'll usually bite the raise dead "lose a level" bullet if i have to, but i won't like it. if i don't care much for the PC, i'll roll up a new one at party level. i honestly never understood the level loss thing: if the player in interested and invested in his character, he'll actively try not to die (unless the character has a martyr-like personality). if the player doesn't like his PC he'll either suicide the character or have him walk off stage and be replaced by a new one.

VirOath
2010-06-13, 12:27 PM
Well, I've been in plenty of campaigns with a bunch of different rules for handling death. So I mostly speak from personal experience here.

I've been in a strict RAW campaign before, and I can tell you that both ends of the level loss for death suck balls. Not to mention, if the DM is treating the party equally, certain build types will die more often than others. I was playing a melee bruiser after my rogue got forced into being a fighter (sorry, Sneak Attack is OP... >.<), different character thank god as the rogue got dominated and had a tower collapse on him. But my melee bruiser was well built, capable of doing it's job, but because of spell effects and conditions being tossed by the DM willy nilly my character was dying just before, or after getting the exp to level. Many of these had ridiculous saves, or no saves at all, to counter the unstoppableness of the NPCs (Aka, DMPCs). I was kept at the same level, while the rest of the part advanced. Then of course, I get level drained to hell just to be even more worthless. Yeah, RAW flat out sucks for this, this system kills fun with the character and gives a heavy penalty to the player. Obvious, but just needs to be flogged into people.

A good medium is making True Res an option to the party at early levels for great deeds or acts for the greater good (evil horde of mobs ransacked a large town, selling everything in the merchant trading hub. So instead of keeping it for themselves, the party returned the treasure to the city, and get a True Res out of the deal). If a character dies without a means to bring them back in a decent timeframe, the player writes up a new character at no penalty save money. Both of these ways waive the level loss. Character retirement is allowed at no penalty if discussed with the DM, but flat out suiciding characters for player reasons (Good IC reasons aren't suiciding) give the full penalty of RAW. This has avoided abuse of these rules without punishing players for dying with my gaming group for a long time after a talk about the case above.

My personal favorite for ways of handling death is actually a variant system entirely. Death is harder to reach for PCs, but absolute. Death is HP+Con Score in the negatives, with double the hitpoints at first level (or Hit Dice + Con Score in the case of a negative con mod). All spells and effects that cause instant death instead drop the player to -1 hp in most situations. Healing can bring a character back from the brink, but this leaves the character fatigued or exhausted for a time. Rez spells have their material components reduced and bring the character back to positives based on the spell (Raise dead being +1 and stages down the conditions, True Res is being back to full in every way, shape and form). Some conditions and spells can only be brought back up with certain spells and don't allow natural healing, while others can only be dealt with through mundane means (Heal checks and natural healing). Dead characters can be brought back using Wish or Miracle from time to time, but not without consequences (Wish bends the universe, but the farther the bend, the harder the universe rebounds. Miracle asks a God for a great use of power in that character's favor, normally at a price of some sort.)

But remember, I hate death's revolving door, I feel it takes something away from the game, and the variant homebrew isn't my own.

Starscream
2010-06-13, 01:12 PM
1) Unless they are dying due to their own stupidity, characters should always get one final moment of awesome. Takes some of the sadness out of dying, and can make a session memorable.

I actually played with a DM who had a rule like this. He called it the Vengeful Badass rule. Basically when you are reduced to -10, your character (even if he was unconscious and bleeding to death prior to this) gets 1 round to make a difference.

During that round they get two actions, which can be of any type. Two standard actions, two full round actions, a full round action and a move action, etc. Any dice rolls you make are treated as rolling the maximum. Attacks will always hit and crit, damage rolls are always maxed, etc. If you are a spellcaster, you get one free slot of your highest level, even if you've run out of those. It's your final surge of adrenaline before you snuff it, so you can do something amazing.

There are downsides to this, however. First of all, nothing you can do (or others can do) will save your life. You can't use one of your actions to chug a healing potion, or restore constitution damage or anything like that. You are essentially dead already, you just haven't stopped moving yet.

Second, by doing this your character is accepting death and going out with a bang. No resurrection, ever. Your character's soul is at peace and will refuse to return. Not so big a deal early in the game when you probably don't have the means to return anyway, but at later levels you should only do this if you are certain you are retiring the character, and want him to go out a hero.

JonestheSpy
2010-06-13, 01:30 PM
In a world with little or no access to Resurrection, you can have a lot of fun with the Ghostwalk rules. I wouldn't recommend adopting the whole thing kit and kaboodle, but there's enough interesting stuff in there to make it worthwhile.

In Ghostwalk the idea is at ghosts can become material in this area near the actual gateway to the afterlife, and a city is built there. Now, I have no interest in setting a campaign in such a place, but I like the idea of a dead character hanging around unable to do anything physical until some requirement is met- finding a magic ring that allows material form, or fulfilling a quest for a necromancer or something.

molten_dragon
2010-06-13, 04:25 PM
When I have PCs die, I just let them create a new character at the same level their old character was at. My only restriction is that if they're creating a new character rather than raising an old one, the new character has to be quite a bit different than the old one. No creating a 'new' character that is 95% identical to the old one just to avoid the level loss for getting raised.

Fuzzie Fuzz
2010-06-13, 06:23 PM
I actually played with a DM who had a rule like this. He called it the Vengeful Badass rule. Basically when you are reduced to -10, your character (even if he was unconscious and bleeding to death prior to this) gets 1 round to make a difference.

During that round they get two actions, which can be of any type. Two standard actions, two full round actions, a full round action and a move action, etc. Any dice rolls you make are treated as rolling the maximum. Attacks will always hit and crit, damage rolls are always maxed, etc. If you are a spellcaster, you get one free slot of your highest level, even if you've run out of those. It's your final surge of adrenaline before you snuff it, so you can do something amazing.

There are downsides to this, however. First of all, nothing you can do (or others can do) will save your life. You can't use one of your actions to chug a healing potion, or restore constitution damage or anything like that. You are essentially dead already, you just haven't stopped moving yet.

Second, by doing this your character is accepting death and going out with a bang. No resurrection, ever. Your character's soul is at peace and will refuse to return. Not so big a deal early in the game when you probably don't have the means to return anyway, but at later levels you should only do this if you are certain you are retiring the character, and want him to go out a hero.

This is awesome. I am stealing this for my campaign.

I play 4e, in which the revolving-door aspect of death is increased, so I let my players die when they will, and get resurrected when they can afford it, pretty much as written. There's no real penalty for coming back, except for the -1 penalty for a while, as described in the Raise Dead ritual. I let players create new characters when the old ones die, at the same level as they were, but they start with less stuff, and don't join the party until an RP-appropriate time.

Trog
2010-06-13, 07:29 PM
My gaming group long ago decided they didn't want to have to worry about dying because of the story-halting mess death can be when you have a campaign centered around specific characters. The only time anyone dies is if the player decides that they do.

In combat, however, they are considered out for the day if they meet the normal conditions for death.

In my last playing session which wrapped up a series of adventures, the PCs killed the villain and one of them met the death conditions. In this case it was decided that the person was dead-dead, not just out-for-the-day-dead.

Then they proceeded to kill off one another (for the kingdom that was the spoils of the adventure) until only one remained the victor. So more death there. If it serves a story purpose and the player doesn't object a death is fine. If it only serves to completely bum out the player and mess up the story then I say ignore it. They are supposed to be heroes afterall.

Hague
2010-06-13, 11:33 PM
Kill 'em. New PCs get death penalty same as revive. Good news is you get your own selection of character features, items and what not while the party loots your corpse and possibly gives your character a decent memorial. Maybe they sell the stuff and buy a 10 charge wand of Revivify. Yes, it sucks to die. Now play Shadowrun and tell me what's worse.

Revivify is also one of the best reason's to actually take a level of Hierophant and pick up Divine Reach. (Though, I'm sure someone will tell me there's a better way to do it.)

sdream
2010-06-14, 09:57 AM
In my current family game, we decided permanent penalties for bad luck suck, so we're rolling with ressurection and reincarnation only giving temporary negative levels (which can be bought off with restorations or waited out).

However, it does lose a bit of the fun risk factor, so we have decided next game will be something modern with no resurrect whatsoever.

monkey3
2010-06-14, 10:21 AM
The problem is that our group had "Exploited" this a few times. One player flung his character at a great wurm black dragon because he didn't like how he was punished for breaking his deity's code and didn't like the quest that he was on, instead of talking to the DM about his issues.

How does one handle that?


This!

We create characters using the point system, so no re-rolling is needed. I can't even curse my players or put the slightest "temporary" disability on them. Death has no drawback.

player: "Oh I die? OK, my new character is identical to my last character. You guys, grab my items for my new guy."
me: "What's your new guy's name?"
player: "NonRpName 3."
me: bang head on table.

Scorpina
2010-06-14, 10:26 AM
If it's actually the final death of the original PC, I'm not opposed to the players new character joining up with the party at the first instance in which it can conceivably make sense for them to do so. If the original character is coming back as soon as his buddies get to the temple, however, I'm more inclined to let the player sit out, so long as it won't be for too long.

Many secondary PCs have joined games in my group in the middle of a dungeon, where they were prisoners or whatever, because previous characters have died. Sadly, this has lead to the problem mentioned above where the new guy gets the old characters equipment and is esentially an Expy. Mreh.

Fax Celestis
2010-06-14, 10:28 AM
if the player isn't attached to a character, death has no fear attached.The only character I ever regretted letting die was a character I LARPed for the better part of two years.

Another_Poet
2010-06-14, 10:30 AM
What do you do when a Player's Character dies with no resurrection available? You can't exactly kick them out of the game forever. How long is enough to sit out? What grounds for making new characters, like what level should they be and should they have less than standard magic items, since the rest of the party still has "Their" items.


"Sit out"? There should be no sitting out. The player can make a new character while the other characters are roleplaying the dead guy's funeral. Then you come up with a way to introduce the new character.

Generally speaking a new character starts 1 level lower than the old character. Some DMs houserule 1 level lower than the party average, 1 level lower than the lowest-level character, or even starting back at Level 1 (bad idea when the rest of the party is high level). Your choice really.

Umael
2010-06-14, 10:51 AM
Just musing here...

I was thinking that it would be pretty cool to have a game where death is just a condition of the game that creates certain limitations but does not actually stop the player from role-playing (and I mean as more than just a corpse). It might even be possible for the game to include adventures where the PC has to die for a while.

Think of it death puts the PC into the spirit world, where the PC has to deal with certain things before rejoining the living.

The first problem I would see, of course, is that death now "splits up" the party, giving the GM double the work. Well, if the world of spirits mirrored the world of the living, maybe the PC (as dead) could influence the physical world, while the physical world could influence the PC.

Imagine a dungeon (for sake of argument) where there were spiritual gates that also acted as spiritual "check-points", possibly guarded by sentinels that could be defeated but not destroyed - furthermore, as far as experience points go, only the first time the sentinels counts. So the party travels the dungeon, finds one of these gates, maybe they defeat the sentinel, maybe not, but they move on to the next room, someone dies, and they have to go back, defeat the sentinel again to allow the spirit to escape and bring the body back to life.

Of course, you don't want to make the game monotonous by having people go back to fight the sentinel, nor do you want a "okay, you use the spirit-leveling cannon, three charges left now, let's go back". Each "death" has to be special, each "return" has to be memorable. Thoughts, thoughts...

*wanders off*

Hague
2010-06-14, 01:31 PM
Heh, yeah, there's always the Deathless template too...

Fax Celestis
2010-06-14, 02:13 PM
Just musing here...

I was thinking that it would be pretty cool to have a game where death is just a condition of the game that creates certain limitations but does not actually stop the player from role-playing (and I mean as more than just a corpse). It might even be possible for the game to include adventures where the PC has to die for a while.

Think of it death puts the PC into the spirit world, where the PC has to deal with certain things before rejoining the living.

The first problem I would see, of course, is that death now "splits up" the party, giving the GM double the work. Well, if the world of spirits mirrored the world of the living, maybe the PC (as dead) could influence the physical world, while the physical world could influence the PC.

Imagine a dungeon (for sake of argument) where there were spiritual gates that also acted as spiritual "check-points", possibly guarded by sentinels that could be defeated but not destroyed - furthermore, as far as experience points go, only the first time the sentinels counts. So the party travels the dungeon, finds one of these gates, maybe they defeat the sentinel, maybe not, but they move on to the next room, someone dies, and they have to go back, defeat the sentinel again to allow the spirit to escape and bring the body back to life.

Of course, you don't want to make the game monotonous by having people go back to fight the sentinel, nor do you want a "okay, you use the spirit-leveling cannon, three charges left now, let's go back". Each "death" has to be special, each "return" has to be memorable. Thoughts, thoughts...

*wanders off*

This sounds incredibly like both Ghostwalk and Wraith: the Oblivion.

Umael
2010-06-14, 02:47 PM
This sounds incredibly like both Ghostwalk and Wraith: the Oblivion.

I do not know about Ghostwalk, but I know in Wraith: the Oblivion there is no way to return from the dead (permanently - I don't think Puppetry counts), and I don't think the PCs will voluntarily kill themselves to go into the Shadowlands to complete a quest (especially since the said-already-mention way to return from the dead doesn't exist).

On the other hand, what it does remind me of is a game like Zelda, where you have to go into another world to fix the problems in the "real" world (like there is a long chasm and the switch to lower the drawbridge is on the other side - but in the shadow world, there is no chasm).

chiasaur11
2010-06-14, 03:26 PM
You know, just thinking of Final Death...

Should have a signpost moment, shouldn't it? I mean, if this is it, there should be a sense of finality.

And, one hopes, a talk in ALL CAPS.