Cheap Roleplaying/Revival

[koboldish]

Playing in a campaign, we had 9 deaths in one meeting. Oops. I was the only one who remained alive the whole time, thanks to being a wizard. The first death was roleplayed as being part of a mages guild (IE free benefits and stuff), but for the rest people just brought in new characters exactly the same as the old ones. How would you roleplay this? And is there a cheaper resurrection option?

We are at level 1 currently, so that is part of the problem.

[Jack_Simth]

Playing in a campaign, we had 9 deaths in one meeting. Oops. I was the only one who remained alive the whole time, thanks to being a wizard. The first death was roleplayed as being part of a mages guild (IE free benefits and stuff), but for the rest people just brought in new characters exactly the same as the old ones. How would you roleplay this? And is there a cheaper resurrection option?

We are at level 1 currently, so that is part of the problem.
Well, at 1st level, it's much easier to simply re-roll a character than it is at, say, 10th, so it's not so much work to simply make new ones. Looks like most people didn't go that route, however.

If playing one of the "new" characters, and I went that route for some odd reason, there's little to specifically roleplay - the new guy doesn't have memories of the old group, so it's nothing odd.

Your perspective, however, is a little different - you're suddenly surrounded by a set of people close to identical to the ones you just lost? That'd be a weird head-game for most people. Those who believe in fate could see it as something akin to 'nature abhors a vacuum', I suppose.

[koboldish]

How would you integrate the new characters in? And what if in the middle of a long dungeon, people are dead and can't do anything for 2 hours?

[ArcturusV]

As silly as it may sound... I still find for that the easiest way is the "Randomly Ran Into Factor".

Where basically some point after the scene has ended, the survivors are RPing onwards making due. The guy who bit it is rolling up a new character. When he's done? Wham! He's just in the next room, around the corner, whatever. Just get him in there. Make up a simple reason, doesn't have to be fancy. Someone else who wanted to raid the dungeon. Maybe a captive of the local band of Orcs who got left behind... a guy who survived a local bandit raid and took shelter here... a monster stole them out of the local village as food but they managed to slip away from the monster before it finished taking them all the way to the lair.

Why doesn't matter so much. It may break the sense of disbelief for a moment... but it's easy to spin it, later. After the session is over and people have time to mull over particulars. The important thing is getting them in the game, now. And not asking everyone to stop while a guy rolls a new character and sit twiddling their thumbs for a half hour.

Personally as a DM I don't like the "Exact Clone Replacement" Thing. I can understand why people do it. It's quick, it's easy. That way they don't feel like they lost all the time and effort they put into developing this character, etc. But it also suggests a Consequences Free game. Least I don't REALLY see it as a consequence if Bob the Ranger dies, and they can jump in with Bob the Ranger II, with the exact same items, feats, stats, backstory, etc. Consequences build drama and excitement for me. So I'm always loathe to see Consequence limiting/free situations.

[Alienist]

There's an old roleplaying game where they didn't just embrace this concept, they enshrined it.

You had six clones, and a whole lot of experimental weaponry that was quite likely to backfire, killing another random party member. Who, naturally, would be forced to retaliate.

:D

Ah Paranoia, the only game I know of with a module that explicitly says towards the end that "If the players got this far, they were obviously cheating, execute them."

[koboldish]

I dislike the idea of bringing in clones as well, but then again, I'm not the one who died.



Edit: I agree, death should have somewhat major consequences. Unfortunately, all of the people who died before had never died in another campaign, and thought themselves invincable. Oops.

[Krobar]

There's an old roleplaying game where they didn't just embrace this concept, they enshrined it.

You had six clones, and a whole lot of experimental weaponry that was quite likely to backfire, killing another random party member. Who, naturally, would be forced to retaliate.

:D

Ah Paranoia, the only game I know of with a module that explicitly says towards the end that "If the players got this far, they were obviously cheating, execute them."

The computer is your friend.

[Palanan]

Keep your laser handy.

:smalltongue:



As to the OP's question, this happened to me the very first night of my very first 3.5 game. Myself and another new guy, with our fresh level 1 characters, foolishly decided to separate from the rest of the level 3 party. We met an orc patrol and never had a chance.

Our DM respawned us as "your twin brothers," which we ran with, and which I even wrote into my new character's backstory. When our characters swifty died again (the same two) our DM changed his strategy and let us roll up third-level characters to be even with the rest of the party. My new third-level druid made it a good ways towards epic before the campaign finally ended.

[koboldish]

At the moment, the whole party is level one though. Some people were pulling their weight, others weren't. The DM was using the CR system, so that could have been part of the problem.