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Meepwizard
2017-06-19, 03:33 PM
For my campaign I was thinking of leveling up my players extremely quickly, but making the encounters and traps extremly deadly as well; in addition to that if they die than they restart at level one with resurrections being even rarer than what is normal. I would like to know what you're thoughts are on this, and how you'd improve this. We would be playing D&D 5e, and by quickly I mean once a session with punishing traps and encounters

Thanks for the advice so I would end up on a tight rope walk from killing the pc's and pushing the pc's, maybe they simply make the new character one level behind the party's average level so as to prevent low level purgatory in a high level campaign. I likely wouldn't have thought if this until the problem had shown up

Again any advice on this will help out a first time dm

BRC
2017-06-19, 03:38 PM
Let's break this down

For my campaign I was thinking of leveling up my players extremely quickly,
That's fine, especially if you want to explore the game from 1 to 20 without neccessarily doing a multi-year campaign.


but making the encounters and traps extremly deadly as well;

There are plenty of players out there who would enjoy this sort of game (Tomb of Horrors is a classic for this reason), but many players won't. In addition, as a DM it is very difficult to toe the line between "Very Hard Encounter That Will Push PCs To Their Limits" and "Just Murdering the Party". "I'm going to make very dangerous encounters" is a risky mindset for a DM to have.


in addition to that if they die than they restart at level one with resurrections being even rarer than what is normal. I would like to know what you're thoughts are on this, and how you'd improve this.
This is just a Bad Idea. Like, some level disparity within a party can work fine, but dropping them to Level 1 each time is a huge problem. Level 1 specifically is a very dangerous level, when even standard issue Orcs can one-shot a PC.

If the rest of the party is level 7, and you're level 1, what's most likely going to happen is that your going to die, again, and be stuck at level 1 in an endless loop. That simply is not very fun. A single run of bad luck basically traps you in level 1 purgatory forever,. Not only useless, but sitting at by far the highest risk of resetting.

KillianHawkeye
2017-06-19, 03:56 PM
in addition to that if they die than they restart at level one with resurrections being even rarer than what is normal.

I agree that this is a bad idea. Not only does it make crafting the encounters more difficult for the DM, but as a player it would be a really great way to get me to stop caring about my characters and the game as a whole.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-06-19, 04:15 PM
Could I suggest, once everyone in the party makes it to level 3, that level 3 be the base cap for new characters? Level 1-2 are supposed to be training levels anyway and it's expected that players will skip those levels once they know what they're doing.

Lazymancer
2017-06-19, 04:31 PM
... making the encounters and traps extremly deadly as well; ...
Again any advice on this will help out a first time dm
1) Don't do it. That's a rookie mistake.
2) Force players to limit description of their character to 1 (one) sentence.
3) Make chargen fast - it has to happen within 5 minutes or less.


Also, while starting from 1st level is possible, it is possible in sandbox-y games and does not mesh with encounters/traps always being extremely deadly. There is no "deadly", there is only "deadly for characters this strong". Consequently, you'll be either giving no chance to the 1st-level characters, or making game easy for higher-level characters.

Jay R
2017-06-19, 04:40 PM
It doesn't really matter what we think about it. Find out what your players think about it.

If you do this without telling them they are likely to feel abused.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-19, 04:41 PM
I don't think it is an inherently bad idea to set up a difficult game with a lot of death.

Some common pitfalls have already been pointed out, and I would add some more

- Extremely lethal games will encourage extremely bad player behaviors, like saying "I roll Perception!" every other sentence.
- Extremely difficult video games such as roguelikes and soulslikes work only because there is a guarantee that the game is fair - that you had a chance of allaying all the bad stuff that can happen, only you weren't skilled or smart enough to do so. This is possible because these games are run by a totally impartial computer, and have been quite thoroughly designed by teams of professionals and testers. If you can't achieve the same level of fairness, your game will feel arbitrary.


There are far better systems to run a lethal game where you want players to possibly be of different power levels. I would go with a system that is a bit lighter and with a lot more built-in randomness, like Savage Worlds. (Then again, I am someone who thinks Savage Worlds is good for pretty much everything)

Floopay
2017-06-19, 06:00 PM
For my campaign I was thinking of leveling up my players extremely quickly, but making the encounters and traps extremly deadly as well; in addition to that if they die than they restart at level one with resurrections being even rarer than what is normal. I would like to know what you're thoughts are on this, and how you'd improve this. We would be playing D&D 5e, and by quickly I mean once a session with punishing traps and encounters

Thanks for the advice so I would end up on a tight rope walk from killing the pc's and pushing the pc's, maybe they simply make the new character one level behind the party's average level so as to prevent low level purgatory in a high level campaign. I likely wouldn't have thought if this until the problem had shown up

Again any advice on this will help out a first time dm

I don't have much experience in 5e. But I've DM'd a lot.

If you don't want the mess of constantly justifying them making new characters or whatever; but want them to always be relatively close to the party's level. You can always use the old "They are part of a grand organization" scheme. Basically, they can be mercenaries, members of an order, or whatever. When one dies, then the organization sends a new person to round out their party.

Also is an easy way to get them jobs, quests, and etc.

Thanks for reading,
Floopay

LibraryOgre
2017-06-20, 12:08 PM
I would make sure that the players understood this was going to be something of a meatgrinder campaign.

"We are playing rocket tag. Your characters WILL die unless you are extremely clever or lucky. If you have a special background you are really wanting to play, this is not the campaign for that."

SirBellias
2017-06-20, 12:15 PM
1) Make sure they know what they are getting into.

2) I've found that level 2-3 characters are able to scrape through a CR 5 encounter without too many deaths. The trick is to make a difficult problem, and accept any difficult solutions your players can come up with.

3) Be aware that the degree of serious role-playing will probably go down, as players tend not to get too attached to characters they stand a decent chance of losing.