Is dying too serious or not serious enough?

[Fwiffo86]

Found this article online. I guess its more like a blog post now that I think about it. In either case, it's an essay on raising characters from the dead. It has some very interesting points and things to think about.

I know some here are loathe to kill characters because the player has to sit out until this is remedied. I thought you may want to glance at this, largely because it suggests that maybe it isn't your fault at all. Well, some of the time. LOL

http://home.earthlink.net/~duanevp/dnd/resurrection.htm

[JNAProductions]

I know some here are loathe to kill characters because the player has to sit out until this is remedied. I thought you may want to glance at this, largely because it suggests that maybe it isn't your fault at all. Well, some of the time.

Not your fault? The link pretty clearly says it's the DM's fault the majority of the time.

That being said, it's very good, showing a good solution to a problem rather trying to work on symptoms. It requires you to work with your players a lot more than older patches, but if you can't work with your players, that's a group dynamic failing, not an issue with you.

[M Placeholder]

It depends on the setting. In my Dark Sun group, I explained to all the players that due to the sheer brutality of the setting, and very few high level clerics in a particular area, resurrection for a player that had died was highly unlikely. Not to mention that there was probably not going to be enough of the player left for the process to work. They
understood that if their player character died, that was it, and the afterlife consisted of the Gray.

[goto124]

Dying means the player has to wait while her friends figure out how to ressurect her...

[b4ndito]

When I DM my next go-round I'm going to limit resurrection to Divine Intervention. If you appease your deity, or a particular deity is interested in your actions, that deity might raise you. That will be the only means of it, and I'll likely only allow it once per player (if even that much).

[Hiro Protagonest]

It depends on the setting. In my Dark Sun group, I explained to all the players that due to the sheer brutality of the setting, and very few high level clerics in a particular area, resurrection for a player that had died was highly unlikely. Not to mention that there was probably not going to be enough of the player left for the process to work. They
understood that if their player character died, that was it, and the afterlife consisted of the Gray.

There are clerics in Dark Sun?

Granted, I don't know what 2e Dark Sun looked like, given that 4e Dark Sun apparently turns the clock back (at around the first successful rebellion against a sorcerer-king, in Tyr).

[Slipperychicken]

Dying means the player has to wait while her friends figure out how to ressurect her...

Or until someone can contrive a replacement.

[kaoskonfety]

I ran a recent 3rd ed. game where cleric was defined as a prestige class - to get in you needed 8 levels adept (the NPC class) - you could then at 9th erase the NPC class and write down level 9 cleric (keep the familiar and lost heavy and medium armor, retained access to the adept spell list). Adept got a reskin as "priest" and assess to good and healing domain (or evil and death for the bads).

This was intended to keep the game a bit grittier (healing is harder to get your hands on, healing items very rare and mostly in church hands, druid was outright banned for PC's) and to showcase the clerics the party did run into/become as conduits of DIVINE POWER and not wandering heal bots with the "get out of death free" button sewed on the back. "Ding" and you go from cure serious wounds and delay poison to Raise dead and Flame strike

I deliberately set up a local elderly adept, at 8th level as one of the major NPC's and village leader of faith to keep resurrection available while leaving the players in doubt in their options. In the event of the death of one of the great heroes, raise dead was "at hand" in the form of "ding" on the NPC - those at the funeral get to witness a miracle and the old man passes on from the exertion and into sainthood and I get a kick ass scene and a PC now has pilgrims coming to touch his cape and marvel at the scar though his torso.

Nobody died. Was kinda depressing.

[Inevitability]

There are clerics in Dark Sun?

Element-worshippers, mostly. 4e also had some suggestions for justifying one, but I honestly can't be bothered to look them up now.

[Psikerlord]

Element-worshippers, mostly. 4e also had some suggestions for justifying one, but I honestly can't be bothered to look them up now.

I took the articles advice a while ago. In my 5e game the spells revivify, raise dead and resurrection have been removed from the spell lists for players. Whether they might exist somewhere in the game world is undetermined... I do not want death trivialized, which is what I feel those spells do.

[mephnick]

I simply have a low powered world where maybe a dozen NPCs on the continent are 9th level or higher. So if you die, you can't go to the corner store and buy a raise dead, but it's not impossible to find if you really care about a character. Once players get to 9+ they are literally the most powerful people on the planet and if they want to raise dead then they can go ahead. It might gain attention, or anger certain religions though. Usually my campaigns end around that level anyway, but if I went to 20 and had to worry about resurrection being an every day occurrence I might have to set some limits on it. Like have it only work once per soul or something.

Edit: I agree with the article that if you don't want it, the best thing to do is ban it outright. I just can't bring myself to do it completely, the dice are too fickle.

[Thrudd]

It's strange nobody looks to earlier editions for the answer to this dilemma. Constitution and system shock rolls. A main function of constitution is as a limiter on resurrections. Every resurrection permanently subtracts a point of con. Also, a resurrection requires a successful system shock roll, which has less chance of success the lower your con score. So, each raising makes subsequent raises less likely, and there is the hard limit of your con score.

[rhouck]

It's strange nobody looks to earlier editions for the answer to this dilemma. Constitution and system shock rolls. A main function of constitution is as a limiter on resurrections. Every resurrection permanently subtracts a point of con. Also, a resurrection requires a successful system shock roll, which has less chance of success the lower your con score. So, each raising makes subsequent raises less likely, and there is the hard limit of your con score.

AND your initial, starting Con score was a hard limit no matter what. So if you started with a 10, had it decreased to 9 because of a resurrection, but then increased it back to 10 by magic... you still could only be raised 9 more times. The only exception was divine intervention.

Adding back in resurrection survival would be hard to do (though a Con Save +5 would come close), but reducing Con one point per death certainly wouldn't be. That would definitely make characters fear death again!

[archaeo]

It's strange nobody looks to earlier editions for the answer to this dilemma. Constitution and system shock rolls. A main function of constitution is as a limiter on resurrections. Every resurrection permanently subtracts a point of con. Also, a resurrection requires a successful system shock roll, which has less chance of success the lower your con score. So, each raising makes subsequent raises less likely, and there is the hard limit of your con score.


Adding back in resurrection survival would be hard to do (though a Con Save +5 would come close), but reducing Con one point per death certainly wouldn't be. That would definitely make characters fear death again!

The problem, as the essay points out (at, uh, considerable length), is that players will always pay the resurrection costs if they want to keep playing their character, and placing restrictions like these will only serve to create conflict. You're creating a mechanical impediment to a metagame problem, more or less, and the only result is that your PCs will have lower Con scores than they ought to have. You could do the system shock thing, or otherwise penalize players who have been resurrected, but, unless you really keep the pressure on, the players are going to want to just hole up and rest off the malus.

I tend to agree with the general thrust of the essay, if not the entire thing. You can simply ban resurrection magic outright, or make it significantly more rare than it appears to be in the "default setting." You can come up with clever plot-driven reasons that characters can't be resurrected. You can do lots of things. But a big pile of mechanics between the players and resurrection only serves to complicate the game and doesn't really accomplish much.

In any case, a permanent Con reduction is unlikely to really make anyone "fear death again."

[Thrudd]

The problem, as the essay points out (at, uh, considerable length), is that players will always pay the resurrection costs if they want to keep playing their character, and placing restrictions like these will only serve to create conflict. You're creating a mechanical impediment to a metagame problem, more or less, and the only result is that your PCs will have lower Con scores than they ought to have. You could do the system shock thing, or otherwise penalize players who have been resurrected, but, unless you really keep the pressure on, the players are going to want to just hole up and rest off the malus.

I tend to agree with the general thrust of the essay, if not the entire thing. You can simply ban resurrection magic outright, or make it significantly more rare than it appears to be in the "default setting." You can come up with clever plot-driven reasons that characters can't be resurrected. You can do lots of things. But a big pile of mechanics between the players and resurrection only serves to complicate the game and doesn't really accomplish much.

In any case, a permanent Con reduction is unlikely to really make anyone "fear death again."

They will at least fear death when they are down to 1 point of Con. You can't "rest it off", that's what permanent reduction means.

The purpose of the mechanic is not to cause them to avoid resurrections, it is to place a logical limiter on them. It is a compromise between the desire for real and lasting effects of character death and the players reasonable desire not to lose their favorite character. Sure, you can bring this character back, but this won't work forever. Eventually, you will run out of "lives", so you still ought to tread carefully with your character.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I think ultimately the best way to preserve the mystique of death is to give PCs plot armor. Noone wants to lose a good character that everyone is enjoying when they die to a random crit, so the DM goes along with rezzing them. Don't! Have the character narrowly survive, unless circumstances make it impossible. It's the same result in the end anyway, without making players dependent on PC or NPC clerics.

Keep actual player death in your back pocket; save it for particularly dramatic scenes or for characters who arn't working out.

I mean... 5e kinda works this way anyway, since death saving throws give other party members time to resolve a situation. In some cases it's a little too forgiving, since if you don't get kilt it's easy to get back up with healing magic. (Unless I forgot something.)

[ad_hoc]

I think ultimately the best way to preserve the mystique of death is to give PCs plot armor. Noone wants to lose a good character that everyone is enjoying when they die to a random crit, so the DM goes along with rezzing them.

Correction, no one in your game wants that.

In the groups I play with we want our PCs to be able to die. Actually die.

That makes not dying a success. It is necessary tension. If the characters couldn't die we would stop caring about them.

Also, PC death makes for memorable encounters.

[Slipperychicken]

I think ultimately the best way to preserve the mystique of death is to give PCs plot armor. Noone wants to lose a good character that everyone is enjoying when they die to a random crit, so the DM goes along with rezzing them. Don't! Have the character narrowly survive, unless circumstances make it impossible. It's the same result in the end anyway, without making players dependent on PC or NPC clerics.

In my experience, it quickly became obvious that I was being saved by DM-handouts. After that, I just couldn't get into the game without some kind of real risk involved.

I mean, seriously, it's an imaginary character. You can get over it. Or even restart the dungeon if you really want to keep playing. Or establish a system ("You get 1 DM cookie. You can spend it to avoid dying. Use it wisely"). As long as you aren't constantly trying to pull a fast one every time someone's hit points dip below 1/4.

[Thrudd]

I think ultimately the best way to preserve the mystique of death is to give PCs plot armor. Noone wants to lose a good character that everyone is enjoying when they die to a random crit, so the DM goes along with rezzing them. Don't! Have the character narrowly survive, unless circumstances make it impossible. It's the same result in the end anyway, without making players dependent on PC or NPC clerics.

Keep actual player death in your back pocket; save it for particularly dramatic scenes or for characters who arn't working out.

I mean... 5e kinda works this way anyway, since death saving throws give other party members time to resolve a situation. In some cases it's a little too forgiving, since if you don't get kilt it's easy to get back up with healing magic. (Unless I forgot something.)

I think plot armor is a terrible, game breaking way to run things. It isn't a game anymore, it's the DM telling a story that the players get to perform in. Hiding the fact from them that this is how you are running things makes it even worse.

Random dice rolls killing characters is something that happens sometimes. That's why resurrection magic exists. As long as there are actual, hard limits on it, death still means something but there is some buffer to get characters through some of the randomness.

[MeeposFire]

There are clerics in Dark Sun?

Granted, I don't know what 2e Dark Sun looked like, given that 4e Dark Sun apparently turns the clock back (at around the first successful rebellion against a sorcerer-king, in Tyr).

In 2e yes they used the idea that clerics worshiped the elements themselves instead of deities.

In 4e the default was that there were no divine classes so clerics and the like were out since there were no deities (which was the typical definition for divine power in 4e) however there was nothing really stopping you from allowing clerics if you liked that old 2e style. The biggest reason that they allowed for no divine characters in 4e Dark Sun was because they were not needed as much as they were in 2e because there were plenty of cleric type characters in 4e whereas there was a greater need for clerics in 2e.

Essentially 2e had to reflavor clerics in order to keep the healing niche covered (unless they created a new class which they did not for whatever reason) whereas 4e no longer needed to do that so it was free to stick with a flavor exclusion which in a different twist is highly unusual in 4e (most times it defeaulted to allowing everything and give you ideas on how to incorporate them in other settings).

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I think plot armor is a terrible, game breaking way to run things. It isn't a game anymore, it's the DM telling a story that the players get to perform in. Hiding the fact from them that this is how you are running things makes it even worse.

Random dice rolls killing characters is something that happens sometimes. That's why resurrection magic exists. As long as there are actual, hard limits on it, death still means something but there is some buffer to get characters through some of the randomness.

In game terms, there's little meaningful difference between playing a 'death' as a death or as a severe disabling injury. If anything, severe disabling injuries cab be more consequential, since they could result in a physical trauma such as a lost eye that helps define a character.


In my experience, it quickly became obvious that I was being saved by DM-handouts. After that, I just couldn't get into the game without some kind of real risk involved.

Consequences are important! But as outlined in the thread and at the link in the start, death isn't much of a consequence in DND. It's a financial penalty. It's not really death. I speak of preserving the mystique of death because personally I want raising the dead to be pretty special.

If I gave the impression that the DM should save you in combat i misspoke.

[JAL_1138]

Correction, no one in your game wants that.

In the groups I play with we want our PCs to be able to die. Actually die.

That makes not dying a success. It is necessary tension. If the characters couldn't die we would stop caring about them.

Also, PC death makes for memorable encounters.

Many times this. I guarantee you I wouldn't remember some of my characters except for their random, pointless deaths, like the 2e wizard who got one-shotted by a mildly-annoyed goat. We laughed about that one for years afterward. It was fun, it was funny, and I had a spare character sheet.

I just can't give a darn about trying to keep the character alive if rezzing is easy. There's not much point in trying to stay alive, since dying is just another status ailment. If it's difficult and has a good chance of not working (e.g., system shock roll--even the 2e rolls were a bit too forgiving sometimes), that still allows the chance for it to happen, but I at least care about trying not to die. Perma-death works too, although I like having a slim chance better than no chance. But If I can't have a slim chance, I'd much rather have zero chance than a guarantee of success. I like the idea of limiting it to Divine Intervention except that that requires a capstone-level cleric, and if there's one of those around where the players can get to them, why aren't they off fighting the Big Bad of the Week? It's sort of the Eleminster Problem. "Oh, I'm simply too busy to go save the world/kingdom/city/whatever..." (or "Oh, sorry, I have to save the world/etc. from a threat so significant your campaign villain is trivial in comparison").

And no matter how the article justifies it, I can't get past the idea that easy resurrection would trivialize death the world over. "Oh, the king was assassinated? Call in the relatively-low-level cleric, as per His Majesty's instructions." There's not going to be a culture of treating death as a solemn thing when the gods are handing out the ability to undo it like candy to midlevel clerics. And if we're using the Planescape cosmology, the afterlife for the vast majority of people ranges from "reasonably decent" to "horrible," and most of the dead don't even retain memory of their mortal life--so if anyone wants their mind and memory and personality to remain intact, they're going to want rezzed.

[Garimeth]

So the 13th Age system actually has a way of handling this that I plan on incorporating into 5e:

Any given caster can unless resurrect somebody a certain number of times (like 3) and each time is at greater personal cost and greater difficulty. Any given character can only be resurrected a certain number of times (like 3) and then they are done.

Now add on top of this that there aren't a ton of high level clerics in the setting (DM dependent), and also that most people who actually have a resurrection to spare that can cast it, may want to save that for other people than your character, or that tyrants and powerful individuals probably bowguard the people who can actually cast resurrection in case they bite the dust themselves. Now the prospect of PC death is much worse, they may not even know anybody who can do it, if they do that person may not be willing or may not be accessible.

This is how I plan on handling it, with the exception of spare the dying. I'll probably limit the res to character level divided by 5 or something. Still leaves you with the problem of finding someone who can do the resurrection.

[goto124]

If getting resurrected is hard, what will the player behind the PC do... play an NPC trying to help revive the PC?

[Fwiffo86]

If getting resurrected is hard, what will the player behind the PC do... play an NPC trying to help revive the PC?

Do whatever they can to NOT die in the first place. Make better tactical decisions, etc.

[Garimeth]

If getting resurrected is hard, what will the player behind the PC do... play an NPC trying to help revive the PC?

Try harder not to die, and then if they do die, make the decision if A. resurrection is even an option at this point and B. decide if they want to go through the necessary steps and/or wait.

If the answer to either A or B is no, then roll a new character and be more careful next time, and yeah if they want I'd let them play an NPC. TBH though you'd be surprised I think just how many players will automatically opt to roll a new character and be quite happy with it.

[Blacky the Blackball]

I simply have a low powered world where maybe a dozen NPCs on the continent are 9th level or higher. So if you die, you can't go to the corner store and buy a raise dead, but it's not impossible to find if you really care about a character. Once players get to 9+ they are literally the most powerful people on the planet and if they want to raise dead then they can go ahead. It might gain attention, or anger certain religions though. Usually my campaigns end around that level anyway, but if I went to 20 and had to worry about resurrection being an every day occurrence I might have to set some limits on it. Like have it only work once per soul or something.

Edit: I agree with the article that if you don't want it, the best thing to do is ban it outright. I just can't bring myself to do it completely, the dice are too fickle.

I take the opposite view. I tend to run a world where there are large numbers of NPCs of 9th level or higher (it helps that I tend to use Mystara, which has that as canon). PCs reaching 9th level means "we can do a Raise Dead in situ rather than needing to go back to town". 9th level PCs are getting to be movers and shakers in society, but they're nowhere near the most powerful people in the country, never mind the planet.

So to me the "Revolving door afterlife" of easy resurrection is a feature not a bug. In my campaigns society is structured around the presence of magic and one of the features of that is that people dying (even commoners) have a reasonable chance of coming back. So death in the setting is treated like coma is in the real world - it's serious and worrisome, but you don't give up hope immediately because lots of people recover from it.

And the great thing about D&D is that there's no objectively right way to run a game, so we can both be subjectively right in our own campaigns as long as our players are happy!

[Xetheral]

Do whatever they can to NOT die in the first place. Make better tactical decisions, etc.

I find that more often that not players are *too* scared of their characters getting hurt or dying. In a 3.5 game I've been running for the last year none of the PCs have died yet, yet the party is often paralyzed by indecision over whether the stakes/rewards are great enough to justify the personal risk. I recently deliberately killed off an animal companion just so that the players could see how easy ressurection was to obtain given their available resources.

Similarly, while it's not been true in the current game, in general I have no need to encourage better tactical decisions. To the contrary, I find that players too often play every character as a tactical genius, rather than relying on the character's personality to inform their combat actions.


TBH though you'd be surprised I think just how many players will automatically opt to roll a new character and be quite happy with it.

I've seen groups like this, but not in a very long time. All the groups I've seen for the last 15 years or so have been dominated by players that are extremely attached to their characters. It could be chance, or it could be correlated to player age, or it could be a general trend. Obviously my sample size isn't large enough to draw conclusions, but my experience apparently runs contrary to yours. I think in that time I've had no more than two (or maybe three) players switch characters during a campaign.


And the great thing about D&D is that there's no objectively right way to run a game, so we can both be subjectively right in our own campaigns as long as our players are happy!

Well said.

[archaeo]

They will at least fear death when they are down to 1 point of Con. You can't "rest it off", that's what permanent reduction means.

So, they'll fear it, what, dozens and dozens of sessions into the game?

How deadly is your game, that players get resurrected 10+ times each?


The purpose of the mechanic is not to cause them to avoid resurrections, it is to place a logical limiter on them. It is a compromise between the desire for real and lasting effects of character death and the players reasonable desire not to lose their favorite character. Sure, you can bring this character back, but this won't work forever. Eventually, you will run out of "lives", so you still ought to tread carefully with your character.

I think there are just too many lives being given out here. If you want to achieve the same thing, you'd be better off (in my opinion) just making a house rule that limits any character's number of resurrections would be cleaner. Chipping away at Con, one point at a time, isn't really a dramatic enough effect to serve as a deterrent until it's so dramatic that players won't even opt for resurrection the next time they die.


I think plot armor is a terrible, game breaking way to run things. It isn't a game anymore, it's the DM telling a story that the players get to perform in. Hiding the fact from them that this is how you are running things makes it even worse.

There are ways to "hide" plot armor that result in very interesting stories, in my opinion. I could rattle off a dozen ways to do it.

A core assumption of 5e is that players will want to keep playing their character, especially as they grow more invested over the levels, and that therefore the system provides, by default, a number of ways to accomplish that goal, with better ways becoming available as the players get more levels.

The easiest way to avoid this is to make resurrection impossible or extraordinarily rare. Would you feel that the DM is handing out plot armor if, for example, the only way to be resurrected is to go on a long and dangerous quest?


And the great thing about D&D is that there's no objectively right way to run a game, so we can both be subjectively right in our own campaigns as long as our players are happy!

I agree with Xertheral, this is totally correct and well said.


I've seen groups like this, but not in a very long time. All the groups I've seen for the last 15 years or so have been dominated by players that are extremely attached to their characters. It could be chance, or it could be correlated to player age, or it could be a general trend. Obviously my sample size isn't large enough to draw conclusions, but my experience apparently runs contrary to yours. I think in that time I've had no more than two (or maybe three) players switch characters during a campaign.

I think it's probably fair to say that this tends to be the more dominate playstyle across tables, if only because if more people were interested in deadly games where characters die, 5e would've been designed with that end in mind. It's a complaint that would be hard to miss in a playtest, after all, if the majority of players hated resurrection.

[Garimeth]

I've seen groups like this, but not in a very long time. All the groups I've seen for the last 15 years or so have been dominated by players that are extremely attached to their characters. It could be chance, or it could be correlated to player age, or it could be a general trend. Obviously my sample size isn't large enough to draw conclusions, but my experience apparently runs contrary to yours. I think in that time I've had no more than two (or maybe three) players switch characters during a campaign.

Agreed, my sample size is pretty small too, and ultimately this is going to vary from group to group. Hell Even within my own group people have different feelings about it. Two of them (one of whom is 30 and has never played anything older than 3e, and the other is like 45 and started with AD&D in the Midwest) would hate the idea of an easy res and just opt for new toons, while one of the others (30, started with 3e) would bemoan his toon's death, and the last guy (again 30 started with 3e) varies from case to case.

What works for us, is when I get ready to start our new campaign, I give a very clear picture of the setting, power level of the game, and expectations of the type of gameplay that will be most prevalent, then I see what everybody is most interested in playing and doing, and then build the campaign from there based off of us sharing our expectations for the game. And these change from game to game and setting to setting, even if the system does not. at the end of the day its really about knowing your players and managing expectations.

Nice post btw.

[Thrudd]

So, they'll fear it, what, dozens and dozens of sessions into the game?

How deadly is your game, that players get resurrected 10+ times each?



I think there are just too many lives being given out here. If you want to achieve the same thing, you'd be better off (in my opinion) just making a house rule that limits any character's number of resurrections would be cleaner. Chipping away at Con, one point at a time, isn't really a dramatic enough effect to serve as a deterrent until it's so dramatic that players won't even opt for resurrection the next time they die.



There are ways to "hide" plot armor that result in very interesting stories, in my opinion. I could rattle off a dozen ways to do it.

A core assumption of 5e is that players will want to keep playing their character, especially as they grow more invested over the levels, and that therefore the system provides, by default, a number of ways to accomplish that goal, with better ways becoming available as the players get more levels.

The easiest way to avoid this is to make resurrection impossible or extraordinarily rare. Would you feel that the DM is handing out plot armor if, for example, the only way to be resurrected is to go on a long and dangerous quest?
.

Yes, constitution may be too many lives. It has never happened in my experience that someone has actually lost all their con to resurrections. But the lack of access to resurrections until quite high level is another thing that will deter people from taking death lightly, as would be a more difficult system shock.

I am aware of many ways to hide plot armor as well, and I still feel it is wrong, from a game perspective. From a storytelling perspective (which is not necessarily a goal of D&D), yes, the main characters need plot armor if the story revolves around them.

The reason I do not ban resurrection outright is because of the compromise of giving the players a way to save their characters from random chance deaths.

Regardless of that, character deaths actually aren't that common. 5e rules give ample opportunity for a downed character to be stabilized and survive. Plot armor isn't required.

If the long dangerous quest to resurrect someone is a guaranteed success, then it is plot armor. If there is a chance it will fail and other characters might die along the way ( in other words it really is dangerous), then it is not plot armor. It is just a fact of the game world which the players can choose to engage with, or not. The point is, failure needs to be allowed. If the game wants to portray failure as something other than death, that's ok, but it needs to be something that really matters and affects the players experience.

[Xetheral]

I think it's probably fair to say that this tends to be the more dominate playstyle across tables, if only because if more people were interested in deadly games where characters die, 5e would've been designed with that end in mind. It's a complaint that would be hard to miss in a playtest, after all, if the majority of players hated resurrection.

I hadn't considered that. Very good point. :)


Nice post btw.

Thank you!


I am aware of many ways to hide plot armor as well, and I still feel it is wrong, from a game perspective. From a storytelling perspective (which is not necessarily a goal of D&D), yes, the main characters need plot armor if the story revolves around them.

It sounds like you run extremely gritty, death-filled games. I'd be very curious to see what that's like. :)

Out of curiosity, are you claiming that plot armor (hidden or not) is wrong specifically under your unusual playstyle? Or are you claiming it's wrong for everyone?

[archaeo]

Yes, constitution may be too many lives. It has never happened in my experience that someone has actually lost all their con to resurrections. But the lack of access to resurrections until quite high level is another thing that will deter people from taking death lightly, as would be a more difficult system shock.

So, the restriction baked into the core rules and a subsystem the DMG includes as an optional rule? Along with other optional rules like the Lingering Injuries table?

This isn't to say that it's wrongbadfun to design your own subsystem, of course. But I do feel like the 5e toolkit offers quite a few ways to make a grittier game where death is scary.


I am aware of many ways to hide plot armor as well, and I still feel it is wrong, from a game perspective. From a storytelling perspective (which is not necessarily a goal of D&D), yes, the main characters need plot armor if the story revolves around them.

Agree to disagree here; I think the majority of players are trying to tell a story and not just bump their hit points up against monsters' hit points. It is clearly a goal of the game; there's no reason for the rather large amount of page space spent on Backgrounds if the game expects you to play it as a glorified tabletop roguelike.


The reason I do not ban resurrection outright is because of the compromise of giving the players a way to save their characters from random chance deaths.

See, this just strikes me as disingenuous. I don't really see a happy middle ground, personally; obviously, you feel like Con cost + system shock delivers it, so, problem solved?


Regardless of that, character deaths actually aren't that common. 5e rules give ample opportunity for a downed character to be stabilized and survive. Plot armor isn't required.

Which is another reason that resurrection costing Con and a roll on a System Shock table won't really serve as a big deterrent: players just won't be dying that often. If they are dying often enough that these things matter, you've probably already got a pretty gritty game where death is painful anyway.


If the long dangerous quest to resurrect someone is a guaranteed success, then it is plot armor. If there is a chance it will fail and other characters might die along the way ( in other words it really is dangerous), then it is not plot armor. It is just a fact of the game world which the players can choose to engage with, or not. The point is, failure needs to be allowed. If the game wants to portray failure as something other than death, that's ok, but it needs to be something that really matters and affects the players experience.

Why would you have a long quest to resurrect someone be a "guaranteed success"?

As for "failure as something other than death," I can think of dozens and dozens of ways to make that happen, and so can you, I'm sure. D&D allows for tons of fail states. There's no resurrecting, say, the Material Plane, if the party manages to muck everything up.

[Thrudd]

It sounds like you run extremely gritty, death-filled games. I'd be very curious to see what that's like. :)

Out of curiosity, are you claiming that plot armor (hidden or not) is wrong specifically under your unusual playstyle? Or are you claiming it's wrong for everyone?

"Plot armor" implies that the DM must save the players from the rules of the game in order to further the plot. This robs the players of agency. if your goal is a game where the players make choices which matter, then they must not be shielded from the consequences the game provides for failure.
Having a background for a character doesn't mean they are destined to survive and save the world. The game revolves around the players exploring and interacting with the game world through their characters and the rules describe how that world will react to their actions and what the results of those actions are. The DM creates the world, sets it in motion, and makes judgements in situations where the rules aren't clear. The story and plot are things that come after the adventure is over, and the DM or players write a story about how their adventure turned out. Nobody should know exactly what is going to happen beforehand, not even the DM.

That this play style is now uncommon is not lost on me, but it is not unusual in the sense that the game was originally designed for it and still bears many elements which ultimately support it ( though it has become decidedly schizophrenic in this regard, trying to be all things and therefore requiring modification in order to be perfect for any particular play style.)

My games have never been especially death-filled. To some, however, any deaths at all may seem like a lot, such a person might well call my games gritty or lethal.

[Xetheral]

"Plot armor" implies that the DM must save the players from the rules of the game in order to further the plot. This robs the players of agency.

Not necessarily. While the term implies that the DM is saving the character in order to further a plot, it does not follow that this is a predetermined plot. If the plot is largely driven by the actions of the players then (secretly) giving them "plot armor" can actually increase their agency to effect change in the game world.


if your goal is a game where the players make choices which matter, then they must not be shielded from the consequences the game provides for failure.

We're looking at things even more differently than I first realized. To me, the consequences of failure are the (usually negative) effects on the inhabitants of the game world that arise as a result of the PCs failing to achieve their goals. None of these consequences are at all spelled out by the rules of the game, but are instead story-driven. From my perspective the rules deal instead with the immediate personal cost to the player characters of attempting to succeed. Accordingly, I view "plot armor" and other such devices as tools for controlling that cost (to achieve a variety of priorities such as player enjoyment) rather than as tools for determining the consequences of the players' choices.


The game revolves around the players exploring and interacting with the game world through their characters and the rules describe how that world will react to their actions and what the results of those actions are. The DM creates the world, sets it in motion, and makes judgements in situations where the rules aren't clear. The story and plot are things that come after the adventure is over, and the DM or players write a story about how their adventure turned out. Nobody should know exactly what is going to happen beforehand, not even the DM.

(Emphasis added.) While I agree that not even the DM should know in advance how things are going to turn out (at least not exactly), I've never before encountered the idea that the story and plot are in some games literally afterthoughts. When I DM, everything choice I make in both planning and at the table revolves around the question: "What would help us tell the best story?" There are many, many constraints (e.g. setting fidelity, plausibility, player expectations, OOC time constraints, etc.) but storytelling is the lens through which I decide what to do. In different playstyles the constraints take on differing importance (e.g. setting fidelity is more important in a sandbox, the entire concept of plausibility changes based on whether you view the rules as a model or an in-game physics textbook, etc.), but it never occurred to me that at some tables the story might not even be considered at all by the DM. I had mistakenly assumed that your strict concern with not fudging dice or providing plot armor stemmed from the fact that your tables had wildly different player expectations than my tables did, and so what made a good story at your table would be different than at mine.

If I may ask, when you're planning an adventure or a setting location as a DM, how do you decide what NPCs to populate it with? If story concerns are afterthoughts for you, do you select at random? Or do you only select with an eye to the mechanical variety of opponents? I'm at a loss. After you have populated your world, do you know the aims and motives of the NPCs in question? Or do you just fill those in afterwards with what makes sense based on how the adventure turned out?


That this play style is now uncommon is not lost on me, but it is not unusual in the sense that the game was originally designed for it and still bears many elements which ultimately support it ( though it has become decidedly schizophrenic in this regard, trying to be all things and therefore requiring modification in order to be perfect for any particular play style.)

I've been gaming for 20 years and I've never heard the idea put forward that D&D was originally designed with the idea that the DM would not consider story or plot until after the adventure was over. Normally I'm hesitant to extrapolate from my personal experience, but in this case I'd be astounded if you were correct and I'd somehow never heard a whisper of it. Do you have any support for your claim?

[Slipperychicken]

The reason I do not ban resurrection outright is because of the compromise of giving the players a way to save their characters from random chance deaths.


You could just give each of them a DM-cookie which they can spend to save their characters from a BS death (i.e. turn one attack into a miss, automatically succeed a saving throw, etc). It's ever so slightly metagamey, but has a similar effect (letting you defy the RNG when needed), maintains the finality of death, and doesn't cost nearly as much time or effort.

[kaoskonfety]

As a contrast to restricting raising I tossed together a Final Fantasy campaign rip off a few years back - started level 3, target level? 57 - the last boss was Azathoth straight out of the call of cthulhu book. I was mostly wanting to stress test the 3rd ed epic level rules (and write up the elemental fiends, the dark elf, the monologuing uber-boss prior to his going completely mad with power in the 5th act... you know, Final Fantasy).

Phoenix down was for sale practically everywhere for a few thousand - I don't recall the exact price (single use, use activated, raise dead(ish) wondrous item - took out the level loss and sickness, you kept your spell slots... it was a BIT over powered) and they were "fairly" common dungeon loot, they had 5 at one point. Death remained a suspenseful thing as I ramped the difficulty a fair bit - one of my favourite fights 2 of the 4 party members were dead or disabled from the big bads opening round (it felt really familiar...) and the tactics of juggling actions to get the party members up, remove the paralysis and re-buff/heal to turn the fight around... at the end of which the big bad turned into a snake and switched from spell assault (which they were largely buffed for by then) to large size grapples and poison fangs (they were a bit less prepared)... and ya.
Twas sweet.

[Thrudd]

Not necessarily. While the term implies that the DM is saving the character in order to further a plot, it does not follow that this is a predetermined plot. If the plot is largely driven by the actions of the players then (secretly) giving them "plot armor" can actually increase their agency to effect change in the game world.



We're looking at things even more differently than I first realized. To me, the consequences of failure are the (usually negative) effects on the inhabitants of the game world that arise as a result of the PCs failing to achieve their goals. None of these consequences are at all spelled out by the rules of the game, but are instead story-driven. From my perspective the rules deal instead with the immediate personal cost to the player characters of attempting to succeed. Accordingly, I view "plot armor" and other such devices as tools for controlling that cost (to achieve a variety of priorities such as player enjoyment) rather than as tools for determining the consequences of the players' choices.



(Emphasis added.) While I agree that not even the DM should know in advance how things are going to turn out (at least not exactly), I've never before encountered the idea that the story and plot are in some games literally afterthoughts. When I DM, everything choice I make in both planning and at the table revolves around the question: "What would help us tell the best story?" There are many, many constraints (e.g. setting fidelity, plausibility, player expectations, OOC time constraints, etc.) but storytelling is the lens through which I decide what to do. In different playstyles the constraints take on differing importance (e.g. setting fidelity is more important in a sandbox, the entire concept of plausibility changes based on whether you view the rules as a model or an in-game physics textbook, etc.), but it never occurred to me that at some tables the story might not even be considered at all by the DM. I had mistakenly assumed that your strict concern with not fudging dice or providing plot armor stemmed from the fact that your tables had wildly different player expectations than my tables did, and so what made a good story at your table would be different than at mine.

If I may ask, when you're planning an adventure or a setting location as a DM, how do you decide what NPCs to populate it with? If story concerns are afterthoughts for you, do you select at random? Or do you only select with an eye to the mechanical variety of opponents? I'm at a loss. After you have populated your world, do you know the aims and motives of the NPCs in question? Or do you just fill those in afterwards with what makes sense based on how the adventure turned out?



I've been gaming for 20 years and I've never heard the idea put forward that D&D was originally designed with the idea that the DM would not consider story or plot until after the adventure was over. Normally I'm hesitant to extrapolate from my personal experience, but in this case I'd be astounded if you were correct and I'd somehow never heard a whisper of it. Do you have any support for your claim?

From my perspective, the consequences for failure laid out by the game is clearly character death, or at best incapacitation requiring retreat from the dungeon. What effect the characters have on the setting as a whole is not something mechanically represented.

My personal experience and descriptions if early games provide my outlook. I certainly don't have a scientific study or statistics. I learned to DM and play the game using modules like "keep on the borderlands", "isle of dread" and "village of hommlet/temple of elemental evil". These informed my world design. The key is that the setting is coherent and provides opportunities for characters to adventure. Storytelling is not the concern of the design, it is providing a simulated fantasy world for the players to experience. There will be potential story seeds based on the design of the setting, but how and when events happen will depend greatly on the players' choices and actions.

Take "keep on the borderlands". What is the story there? The players come to a keep in the wilderness. Why are they there? It's up to you/them, but presumably looking for adventure and treasure. There are caves nearby full of various tribes of monsters that have established relationships with each other, some are allies some are enemies. There is an evil cult that has taken up residence there. There are a couple powerful monsters with lairs there. There is a mad hermit that lives in the woods with a panther pet. There is a village of lizard people in the swamp to the south. People in the keep have rumors and information about all these things. The story that develops will depend on what the players want to accomplish there. Do they become friends with the captain of the guards and scout out the monster tribes for him? Do they hear a tale of great treasures and go to the caves looking to get rich? Do they want to eradicate the evil cult for idealistic/religious reasons? Any and all of those things are possible.

The design of a world includes factions and people that have motivations. It consists of locations which provide the occasion for players to pursue the goals implied by the rules of the game (finding treasure and adventure and overcoming monsters and challenges). As the DM, I am an impartial arbiter of the players' interactions with this world, using the established motives and personalities of NPCs and the rules of the game to determine outcomes. There are tables indicating what sorts of people and creatures might be encountered in any given location at random, which should be designed using logic based on knowledge of the setting. Some part of world design does need to include meta concerns of giving appropriate levels of challenge, you don't set first level characters down in a place populated by hostile monsters with 10 hd.

The degree of story that is presented by me would be events occurring in the world around the players. There are monster tribes raiding the borderlands and becoming more bold. People are disappearing in the night and tales are told of eery howls and bloody clothes found in the morning. Rumors of a wizard that lives in a tower beyond the mountains that enslaves unwary travelers. A dragon seen flying around a high peak in the distance. Why the players might want to engage in any of these and what they hope to gain from them depends entirely on their personal goals and their relationships with the world around them. I desire to provide multiple possibilities for adventure in any given location that will be mostly appropriate for the level of the characters. I keep track of the passage of in-world time, and may alter the world in logical ways based on events and people I have set in motion. Monsters on the borderlands destroy a village, if nobody has done anything about them for several months. The dragon raids a caravan. Soldiers come to the keep to hunt orcs that are growing in number. Again, whether or not the players want to engage in any of these areas will depend in them, their goals, how powerful they have become, etc.

I ultimately strive to provide them with fun and interesting challenges that also allow them to experience and discover various elements of this fantasy world. How much effect they have on the world is up to them. The players wind up having tales to tell about adventures featuring characters they created that lived and died, succeeded and failed. It may end up more like a collection of short stories rather than an epic novel, and that is perfectly acceptable.

This is the style and design that I feel is implied and derives naturally from those early modules that I cut my teeth on. Note that I feel that this only applies to D&D. There are other games I love to run and play which are all about story telling, and everything is designed to advance a plot and tell a good tale. I just think D&D specifically is not such a game.

[Chadamantium]

When I have Dm'd, if a player died, they would Co-DM with me. Usually covering encounters until they could raise them or make a new character.

[Occasional Sage]

First of all, that post is a wall of text that makes my eyes glaze. Formatting would be nice.

That said, the assumption is that players want a different style of game than the DM. This is why groups need to talk before starting games to make sure everybody is on the same page.

[zhdarkstar]

Player death is an issue that I've had to find a balance for as someone who primarily runs AL tables, which already have a forgiving-yet-wonky approach to death. To create an atmosphere that fosters player retention, I use the following guidelines to deter an early death without eliminating the risk.

1. Until the final combat or unless specified by the encounter, all intelligent enemies knock out PCs whenever possible. Unintelligent creatures always do lethal damage.

2. Crits against 1st level PCs do normal damage. A lot of the 1st level PCs at my tables are people new to D&D, so I don't want to ruin a first impression with a turn 1 death because the APL pushes the difficulty up too much for beginners. Most of them will level up in a single session anyways, so it's a more of a means of making sure new players focus on the fun instead of the math.

3. Enemies do average damage instead of rolling when there are PCs below the adventure's suggested level. It ties into #2 for the same reason and keeps it simple for a player's first session.

Other than that, I let the dice fall where they may. I've only run 1st tier tables thus far, so my views beyond that will probably be more Darwinian to reflect the greater increases in threats in higher tiers.

[Xetheral]

From my perspective...

Thanks for such an in-depth reply! I apologize that it took me so long to respond. I feel I understand your perspective a lot better now.

Ultimately, I think we're defining the entire concept of "story" quite differently, not to mention having different notions of player agency.

For example, in my mind, Keep on the Borderlands is indeed story-driven. The story in question happens to be very limited in scope: adventurers seeking out challenges and being rewarded for overcoming them. From my perspective, everything in the module is designed around telling that story, rather than the story being a complete afterthought.

I'd further argue that the players have very little agency to impact that story, but that perspective is based on my notions of agency, rather than yours. On the plus side, I now better understand your perspective on fudging-dice rolls and providing plot armor: in a module like Keep on the Borderlands where the player’s success or failure during particular encounters is the story, then yes, messing with the dice does indeed destroy what agency they have.

By contrast, consider a campaign where the overarching story is about overthrowing a corrupt tyrant, but it’s completely up to the players how to go about doing so. Unlike in Keep on the Borderlands, the players instead have enormous agency to dictate the course of the events in the campaign. For instance, there is no pre-set list of opponents, encounters or locations. To a large extent, the types of obstacles the party faces is under their control, but the difficulty level of the ensuing encounters is arbitrarily determined by the DM (based on whatever they think appropriate to the game world, the story, and the campaign). Accordingly, providing plot armor or fudging dice is simply a way to fine-tune what was already an arbitrary judgment call, and therefore doesn’t reduce player agency. (And such fine-tuning can actually increase agency by ensuring that the difficulty level of the encounter matches the story-driven intention.)

Both methods of designing a campaign are of course equally valid. You’d consider one of them story-based and the other not, whereas I’d consider them both story-based (even if not equally). What I object to is your claim that D&D specifically was designed for Keep on the Borderlands-style play. I disagree, and therefore think your claims regarding plot armor (and dice fudging) as they relates to player death and resurrection are not applicable to all (or even most) tables.

[Thrudd]

Thanks for such an in-depth reply! I apologize that it took me so long to respond. I feel I understand your perspective a lot better now.

Ultimately, I think we're defining the entire concept of "story" quite differently, not to mention having different notions of player agency.

For example, in my mind, Keep on the Borderlands is indeed story-driven. The story in question happens to be very limited in scope: adventurers seeking out challenges and being rewarded for overcoming them. From my perspective, everything in the module is designed around telling that story, rather than the story being a complete afterthought.

I'd further argue that the players have very little agency to impact that story, but that perspective is based on my notions of agency, rather than yours. On the plus side, I now better understand your perspective on fudging-dice rolls and providing plot armor: in a module like Keep on the Borderlands where the player’s success or failure during particular encounters is the story, then yes, messing with the dice does indeed destroy what agency they have.


To call that the "story" of the module is similar to saying that Monopoly is a story based game. The story is that you are all real estate moguls trying to buy up property in Atlantic city. And what a railroad! The players have no agency to change that story at all!

D&D is a game about adventurers seeking challenges, every module has that same story. You are right, the players have no agency to alter that, it is a concession of the game. their agency comes in the form of choices they get to make within that framework, often regarding what adventures and challenges to seek out, and always how to go about solving the challenges. If their choices are invalidated because the DM has decided events must proceed a certain way, or the results of their actions invalidated because the DM prefers one outcome rather than another, that is what I call loss of agency.



By contrast, consider a campaign where the overarching story is about overthrowing a corrupt tyrant, but it’s completely up to the players how to go about doing so. Unlike in Keep on the Borderlands, the players instead have enormous agency to dictate the course of the events in the campaign. For instance, there is no pre-set list of opponents, encounters or locations. To a large extent, the types of obstacles the party faces is under their control, but the difficulty level of the ensuing encounters is arbitrarily determined by the DM (based on whatever they think appropriate to the game world, the story, and the campaign). Accordingly, providing plot armor or fudging dice is simply a way to fine-tune what was already an arbitrary judgment call, and therefore doesn’t reduce player agency. (And such fine-tuning can actually increase agency by ensuring that the difficulty level of the encounter matches the story-driven intention.)

Both methods of designing a campaign are of course equally valid. You’d consider one of them story-based and the other not, whereas I’d consider them both story-based (even if not equally). What I object to is your claim that D&D specifically was designed for Keep on the Borderlands-style play. I disagree, and therefore think your claims regarding plot armor (and dice fudging) as they relates to player death and resurrection are not applicable to all (or even most) tables.

I would say, so long as the players really do get to choose exactly how they go about overthrowing the tyrant, the ultimate result of their actions is not predetermined, and they can interact with the game world in a free manner to achieve their goals, this would be no different than the type of game I'm talking about.
You would not have a story preconstructed, only the set up for a story. There is a tyrant, there is the world and people populating that world, and a group of characters who share the goal of overthrowing the tyrant. As with all games, the players will have to make concession to participate in the core assumptions of the game and create characters that want to overthrow the tyrant. This is not loss of agency, this is agreeing to play the game.
I would consider it a loss of agency if the DM decided that the players definitely must succeed at overthrowing the tyrant, and decided to fudge and plot armor them throughout to make sure they ultimately achieved their goal, or at least made it to the final climactic set-piece battle.

What I call a story game is one where the story is plotted out from start to finish in a basically linear manner (different possible paths leading to the same point counts as well). The players are expected to play certain roles in this story, and discover the plot as they interact with the characters and environments the GM puts them in.
Ie: They will have a climactic battle with the tyrant and his minions in his throne room in the Sky castle, after the good prince has been murdered and the villagers are convinced to rise up and drive the soldiers out of town. Those things must happen for the story, and the characters must all have pre-game personal connections to the parties participating in those events so that they are emotionally invested in them.
In such a game, yes, the GM will use or ignore the rules of the game in order to facilitate the telling of the story.
If player agency in this game is defined as their ability to portray the dramatic journey of their character through an epic story with appropriately emotional character arcs, then I guess losing their character before they have finished portraying their journey is a loss of agency, and using plot armor would be preserving it. Personally, I think D&D in any of it's editions does a poor job supporting this type if game.

5e, for the first time, seems to at least acknowledge that there are these different styles of play that need different rule sets to support them, and tell DM's to pick the rules which support their style of play. This way, you shouldn't need to fudge dice and ignore rules to tell your story...picking your rule set is a part of the game. I suppose this has always been an unofficial part of the game, DM's forever have house ruled and modified and ignored in order to play how they like.

[Finieous]

For example, in my mind, Keep on the Borderlands is indeed story-driven. The story in question happens to be very limited in scope: adventurers seeking out challenges and being rewarded for overcoming them. From my perspective, everything in the module is designed around telling that story, rather than the story being a complete afterthought.


If that's the "story," then the "story" works just fine without plot immunity. The "story" can be satisfactorily resolved just fine with a TPK.

In short, I agree with Thrudd. But if you started gaming 20 years ago (in the mid-90s), it makes sense that you might think RPGs had always been story-focused, to some extent. Not only do I think games in the 70s and early 80s tended not to be story-focused, I think they tended to not even be character-focused. The early game, in my experience, emphasized player skill and game mastery, and the PC was both a token and a way of keeping score.

That started to change with Dragonlance, I think, and then really with the rise of "storytelling" games in the early 90s.

[Knaight]

You could just give each of them a DM-cookie which they can spend to save their characters from a BS death (i.e. turn one attack into a miss, automatically succeed a saving throw, etc). It's ever so slightly metagamey, but has a similar effect (letting you defy the RNG when needed), maintains the finality of death, and doesn't cost nearly as much time or effort.

Or you could take any number of mechanics from any number of games that do things like this. Fudge, Fate, Savage Worlds, basically anything with "Fate Points", "Fortune Points", "Hero Points", "Bennies", "Luck Points" or similar terms will do. It's pretty common for one use to be survival where it otherwise wouldn't happen, whether it's declaring that wounds weren't as bad as they seemed, a fall just so happening to be into something comparatively soft, or invoking any number of existing narrative tropes that let a character survive because they were just that lucky or found hidden reserves of some sort.

It is metagamey to some extent, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.