Permadeath campaigns: thoughts?

[BlackOnyx]

I find myself interested in playing (or running) a campaign where death is permanent. No raise dead, no resurrection, no divine intervention.

Does anyone have any experience partaking in a campaign like this? What were your impressions (pros, cons, strengths, limitations, etc.)?

Even for those of you who haven't played in a campaign like this, what are your thoughts? Does it sound interesting? Challenging? Overly difficult?

[Long_shanks]

It depens on what type of campain you are playing.
In my group, we usually play RP heavy games, where permadeath would only mean that randomness (aka die rolls) would get in the way of storytelling and character development. Don't get me wrong, our characters can die, we are not protected by DM providence, but breath of life, reincarnate (loads of fun were had with that one), and others help bring a character back, always with RP implications, if the players wants to.

Futhermore, I dislike that bad luck (or maybe a couple of poor decisions) can force a player back to the drawing board. Don't let death get in the way of a good story, especially when a player is invested in the character. Now, it could take a few sessions to get the PC back, an adventure in and of itself.

Considering this, I don't like the use of "challenging" and "overly difficult" to describe a DnD game. It screams of DM vs player (I might be reading into this, so correct me if I'm wrong). I played in a game like this once, for two sessions, and just ran away from that DM as fast as I could.

[kuhaica]

Depends on the campaign and Dm. I've been in three separate perma death games. Two where using 3.5 rule sits and I forget the other one mostly due to how bad the game was. I think it was a Mythos or World of Darkness game.

Anyways, one game was quite fun as it was a political large scale nation game. Where third level spells where the highest you could get (minus rare items) and all bring back your dead spells minus undead things where banned. It made the game quite fun and made us attatch to our characters

The other game was a more typical campaign with all resurcation like spells removed, no wish/mirical and other such things. Was a pretty brutal game where by fourth session there where seven deaths and thus we all had back ups made. It was basically an endless meat grinder. It was enjoyable, but was mostly a roll fest rather then a D&D game.

So all depends on the game and who runs it.

[heavyfuel]

In D&D death is often random. Though you can always take precautions to avoid it, there's only so much you can do. With this in mind, the designers allowed players and DM relatively easy ways to bring back the dead.

Now, in a campaign where these ways do not exist, I'd hope for some of this randomness to be reduced. Maybe by using Bell Curve rolls (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/bellCurveRolls.htm), or hero/story points that can allow a character to cheat death on occasion, or literally anything else

[Venger]

I find myself interested in playing (or running) a campaign where death is permanent. No raise dead, no resurrection, no divine intervention.

Does anyone have any experience partaking in a campaign like this? What were your impressions (pros, cons, strengths, limitations, etc.)?

Even for those of you who haven't played in a campaign like this, what are your thoughts? Does it sound interesting? Challenging? Overly difficult?

uh huh.

like whenever anyone says they want to play a game without a central feature of D&D, such as the infamous "low magic" game, I'll ask you the same question:

is there a reason you want to use D&D as a system?

death being a slap on the wrist is a pretty important part of how D&D works. there are a lot of spells to come back from the dead and the way the game's written, it's understood sometimes monsters will kill you as part of normal play and your pals will kill him back and res you.

I do have experience playing in games like this. if you do this for an arena style game where it's just mindless combat, then there's no real harm done. if you implement this houserule in a campaign where you expect your players to roleplay, you're gonna have a bad time. if your character can be killed off at any moment, it won't take your players very many guys thrown in the meat grinder before they begin to lose interest in rp. after all, what's the point?

it doesn't sound interesting, just the opposite. it doesn't sound challenging, just annoying. like an old nintendo game, it sounds hard to win, but that's not the same thing as being genuinely difficult.

I do not advise this course of action.

[weckar]

I come at this from the opposite angle from most: I think it would really enhance RP when death is really something to be scared of. It'd foster a closer link between player and character when actions really have permanent consequences like that. In a world where you can just come back, there's no reason why not everyone would just act like the charing mad barbarian.
You have to be protective, you know.

[BWR]

Most RPGs I'm aware of have permadeath, so anyone with experience of almost anything outside of D&D or superhero games will have played a permadeath game. Heck, even low level D&D is often permadeath.
It's perfectly fine in and of itself. The fact that your character can die permanently is, as they say, a feature not a bug. You tend not to have as much combat as many D&D games, and if death is easy (unlike most superhero stories, for instance) you tend to be a bit more cautious about engaging. The important thing is to make a fun story for the players to get involved in. If the game is boring or bad in other respects, being able to come back isn't going to make it better.

As for system, don't listen to those who insist D&D is all or nothing, mechanicswise. You can perfectly easily use d20 rules to run fun permadeath games. I've done so successfully several times. If you and your players like d20 and want to use it without the handful of resurrecting effects, do so. It works just fine. If you intend to use d20 to run a setting with a dedicated system, e.g. using d20 Rokugan instead of R&K, I would recommend using the dedicated system (and that's from someone who thinks d20 Rokugan is perfectly fine, with some tweaks).

[Afgncaap5]

Being able to raise a dead player back to life is a handy resource. Having said that; there's something to be gained story-wise from making death not just a temporary setback to players who need five-thousand gp worth of diamond dust.

What about a compromise: you can bring the dead back to life, but there are no spells to do so. Instead, borrow the Incantations from Unearthed Arcana (or better yet, from Spheres of Power where they're less mechanically restricted). The Cleric might not be able to raise the dead, but she might know of Death's Labyrinth, a long, winding hallway that spirals down until it reaches a gateway to the land of the dead. If you can defeat the guardian at the bottom of the labyrinth, it will permit a single soul to have a chance at returning to life; the deceased player's character can reform as a shade of themselves, and the walk out of the labyrinth suddenly arms itself with deadly deathtraps, terrible monsters, and moral challenges to test the returning soul's worth.

Or perhaps there's a legendary Book of Death hidden in a lost library. If you could find it and haggle with the librarian who guards it, you might be permitted license to erase a single name from the tome, effectively undoing the act of the character's demise. The librarian always asks for a steep price, however, and even when the true price is paid one must be on their guard; the librarian is eager to hand their sash of office to whoever isn't on their guard, a sash that compels its wearer to ensure that the library is always well tended.

Or mayhap the Drektharian Goblins have a leader, the storied Dekthar, who returns to battle even after death. One might infiltrate the battle camps of Drekthar, avoid the notice of the goblin and hobgoblin guards, and discover the secret of the Mithril-chain swaddling gauze that's woven by goblin fingers so fine and dextrous that they say the spiders learned from them how to weave webs. Just put the body of your fallen ally into the swaddling gauze made of mithril chain, and lower it into one of the alchemy pits without the rightful owners of the massive pools of chemicals and alembics noticing, and then your character's back in the thick of it.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by BlackOnyx
I find myself interested in playing (or running) a campaign where death is permanent. No raise dead, no resurrection, no divine intervention.

Does anyone have any experience partaking in a campaign like this?

This has been the norm for virtually every campaign I’ve ever played in, for the past fifteen years and more.

In my experience, character death has never been “a slap on the wrist,” but a fact of gaming life. This is how my first 3.5 DM ran his campaign, and in that game if your character died then you rolled up a new one. That’s been typical of nearly all games I’ve played in since.

And the simple fact is, this didn’t keep us from having fun. A number of those campaigns went on for years, and I don’t remember a single player ever complaining about not being raised. It was just part of the game.

[Gnaeus]

Our games aren’t technically permadeath, but are often functionally permadeath. Raise dead is a thing, but we mostly play T3, so there is rarely a full progression divine caster, and we have a lot of adventures in isolated locations, creating a “do you want to skip the next 8 games or roll a new character?” Issue. I like it. But that’s largely because I like the chargen mini game and I usually have a backup ready to play that I want to experiment with. I like that it makes our actions and luck have permanent consequences.

[PhantasyPen]

I think this is something you might want to be cautious about. My first campaign I ever played in was effectively a "permadeath" game because we were all new to 3.5 and had no idea that "Raise Dead" and the like were even an option, let alone the expected response. What happened was that after the first few character deaths we all kind of stopped caring, because we were introducing new characters so much that it didn't matter who we were playing as anymore and the campaign ended when OOC issues came to a head and ended in a battle royale between the whole party. I still have bad habits caused by my experiences from that game and it's been years now.

[DrBloodbathMC]

In an e6 right now so yeah permadeath is a thing. My character actually died so I rolled up a factotum....I miss Alistair.....

That being said I'm still having fun. I'm playing him as an eccentric old man that has a ton of stories to tell, knows a ton of mundane people through small favors he did, like watch the shop of the butcher when he went to get him son from the city guards, etc.

the characters have no idea what his full name is and I'm waiting to see the in game reaction to it. Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax Sicidabohertz Gombigobella Blue Stradivari Talentrent Pierre Andrt Charton-Haymoss Ivanovicci Baldeus George Doitzel Kaiser the Third.

[Lapak]

It’s something that can go very well and be a source of truly great gaming experiences when - and only when - it’s something the entire gaming group wants to put on the table.

When losses are permanent, close shaves can be transcendently exciting and unlucky deaths can feel really tragic. But it doesn’t work unless everyone at the table is looking for it, because the downs at a permadeath table can be as low as the highs are high.

It also (IME) works better in formats like OD&D where character advancement is geometric and you are expected to be rolling around with hirelings and henchmen, which means you have some backup characters on hand who already have some level of character development and who will catch up to the party mean level of power relatively rapidly once they shift to full PC status.

[jmax]

I think this is something you might want to be cautious about. My first campaign I ever played in was effectively a "permadeath" game because we were all new to 3.5 and had no idea that "Raise Dead" and the like were even an option, let alone the expected response. What happened was that after the first few character deaths we all kind of stopped caring, because we were introducing new characters so much that it didn't matter who we were playing as anymore and the campaign ended when OOC issues came to a head and ended in a battle royale between the whole party. I still have bad habits caused by my experiences from that game and it's been years now.

Obligatory Gamer's: Dorkness Rising clip:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/tOUksDJCijw?start=3594&end=3610 (17 seconds)

[SirNibbles]

We ran a permadeath campaign when we were just starting out and nobody really knew about resurrection. As long as the DM is either using an alternate rolling system (like a bell curve system) or just fudging rolls so that one random bad roll doesn't kill you when you did everything right, it's pretty fun. Of course, the DM isn't going to protect you if you do something stupid and it gets you killed.

As long as a player feels like they have been truly defeated when they die and not just victimised by bad luck, it should be fun.

[Eldariel]

Works in sandbox where the players are largely responsible for what they might antagonise and end up fighting. Thus it's kinda you reap what you sow sort of deal and when you get in over your head, death is a just reward. It's different, it's exhilarating, it's thrilling. Same with the no-magic game I've written a campaign journal for; so far neither of our characters has bitten the bullet but it's been very close a couple of times. I'm actually not sure how we'd continue if one did as there's basically no way anyone is coming back to life aside from a giant deus ex machina, which the world is not suited for. Well, there are some well-developed NPCs that are fairly close with the party so the player with the dead character would probably switch to one of those but the group operational power would be severely diminished as all the characters have more or less indispensable skills on one area or another. It can work but the campaign setup has to be right.

[Blue Jay]

I must be the softest DM ever, because I almost never kill PC's, unless they request it as a closure when they have to leave the game or something. I'm pretty conflict-averse, so I pull punches a lot. I also prefer to play in a low-pressure environment, so I don't like constantly worrying (or making my players worry, when I'm the DM) about whether my next move is going to cost me something big.

So yeah, the idea of permanent death for a PC makes me sad, because I tend to over-invest in my PC's, and I even over-invest in my players when I'm DMing, so it's hard to kill someone when I've got plans and stories in mind for them. If I were going to play in a permanent-death campaign, I would very likely ask someone else to build a character for me that I don't find particularly interesting, then the danger of attachment is lower.

[Crake]

I must be the softest DM ever, because I almost never kill PC's, unless they request it as a closure when they have to leave the game or something. I'm pretty conflict-averse, so I pull punches a lot. I also prefer to play in a low-pressure environment, so I don't like constantly worrying (or making my players worry, when I'm the DM) about whether my next move is going to cost me something big.

So yeah, the idea of permanent death for a PC makes me sad, because I tend to over-invest in my PC's, and I even over-invest in my players when I'm DMing, so it's hard to kill someone when I've got plans and stories in mind for them. If I were going to play in a permanent-death campaign, I would very likely ask someone else to build a character for me that I don't find particularly interesting, then the danger of attachment is lower.

There's nothing wrong with running or playing a game like that, I know a lot of DMs that will fudge rolls to avoid players getting killed, or at least to prevent a TPK, but at the same time I know others who believe that if there's no risk, then there's no fun, because you can never really fail.

[PhantasyPen]

Obligatory Gamer's: Dorkness Rising clip:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/tOUksDJCijw?start=3594&end=3610 (17 seconds)

I think I'm missing context here

[Blue Jay]

There's nothing wrong with running or playing a game like that, I know a lot of DMs that will fudge rolls to avoid players getting killed, or at least to prevent a TPK, but at the same time I know others who believe that if there's no risk, then there's no fun, because you can never really fail.

Yeah, I really only play online nowadays, and I've always enjoyed creative writing, so to me the point of the game was never about overcoming challenges, but about writing a collaborative story using the mechanics of D&D. I think all of my players always know that I don't like playing against them, and I want them to win in the end. I rarely actually fudge dice rolls, but I do sometimes dumb down enemy tactics if it looks like I've under-CRed something... or sometimes I "forget" that the enemy had resistance to that lightning bolt... or sometimes I make the enemy retreat or surrender, even if they're not actually losing the dice war... things like that.

I try to hit the PC's hard enough and often enough that they don't get complacent, and I have killed a couple PC's before (then promptly apologized profusely for it). I also make sure that death isn't the only way for them to fail, so even if their plot armor makes them nigh invincible, they're still not guaranteed to "win."

But, even if death isn't actually permanent, the storytelling experience is much better if everyone writes/plays as if it is. So, I can see why a permadeath campaign might appeal to some people who need that realism to aid them; but for me, it just makes the gaming experience feel a bit stressful.

[jmax]

I think I'm missing context here

The party got a Staff of Resurrection at the start of the adventure, and throughout the whole game the bard keeps dying because he's wimpy. Eventually, because he loses a level every time he comes back, the bard becomes unplayable, so the bard's player instead asks if he can bring a new character in. When the DM agrees, the bard's player pulls out a character sheet with a clone of the same character at the originally starting level. When that bard dies, the player produces another clone sheet. The cycle repeats several times. Eventually, in one particularly difficult combat, there are enough bard corpses for the party to use them as cover - death as battlefield control.

At an earlier point in the movie, after the first few deaths but before this clip, there's a scene in which the bard's player (who owns a gaming shop) is forcing one of his employees to keep filling out copies of the character sheet for him when the shop is empty.

And you (and everyone else, especially here) should totally watch the whole movie, because it's fantastic and hilarious. I added start and end times to that link for the 17-second clip, but you can use the same link to navigate to the beginning and watch all the way to the end.

[DeltaEmil]

One of the reasons why permadeath in a game system like D&D 3.x is perhaps not a good idea is that character creation in D&D 3.x takes a lot longer than in prior editions.
Just the fact that you have to choose feats alone already makes creating a new character a possible hassle. And the higher-leveled your character needs to be, the more choices you have to take. There's also equipment, character background story and time spent having to roleplay how the group meets and accepts the new guy (their old buddy died, why should they suddenly accept this new person?) that needs to be considered.
If your character is a spellcaster, you'd need to also consider which spells to choose, which means going through the rulebooks and supplementals to find all the new fitting spells. Plus of course negotiating with the GM and the gaming group if the new character even fits into the campaign.

Most of those problems related to character creation could be alleviated by simply reusing the same character and changing the name to to make it count as a new person, but then again, that would just make it a clone with a different name, so what would be the point of introducing permadeath? You'd just be playing with free resurrections.

At the lower levels, the permadeath element could still work, though, since character creation is faster.

[Crake]

One of the reasons why permadeath in a game system like D&D 3.x is perhaps not a good idea is that character creation in D&D 3.x takes a lot longer than in prior editions.
Just the fact that you have to choose feats alone already makes creating a new character a possible hassle. And the higher-leveled your character needs to be, the more choices you have to take. There's also equipment, character background story and time spent having to roleplay how the group meets and accepts the new guy (their old buddy died, why should they suddenly accept this new person?) that needs to be considered.
If your character is a spellcaster, you'd need to also consider which spells to choose, which means going through the rulebooks and supplementals to find all the new fitting spells. Plus of course negotiating with the GM and the gaming group if the new character even fits into the campaign.

Most of those problems related to character creation could be alleviated by simply reusing the same character and changing the name to to make it count as a new person, but then again, that would just make it a clone with a different name, so what would be the point of introducing permadeath? You'd just be playing with free resurrections.

At the lower levels, the permadeath element could still work, though, since character creation is faster.

I run an e6 game with permadeath, simply because resurrection magic and it's ilk are not available to the general populus. It exists, but is for the realm of heros. The setting itself isn't entirely e6, but the majority of the population is constrained by it, and the game I'm currently running, the players are like the "regular joes" trying to make their way in a dangerous world. I actually also toyed around with having new characters come in at level 1, rather than level 6 with the same amount of feats, because it only takes 15,000 xp to get to level 6, which is the same as three e6 feats, minus the fact that lower level characters gain xp faster, it's about 2 e6 feats for a level 1 character to hit 6. It's worked pretty well so far, nobody below level 6 has actually died, though at one point, while the characters were in the feywild, they had an encounter that left them with only 1 person alive, so I had that character stumble through the feywild, about a thousand years into the future to have a fresh perspective on the game.

Funnily enough, that character was a samurai (OA, not CW), and everyone made samurai jack jokes.

[Vaern]

I'm in agreement that death can occur far too randomly, unexpectedly, and unavoidably to make resurrection altogether unavailable to the players. If you're doing to do a permadeath gave, you'll also need to pull your punches when it comes to save-or-die scenarios.

On the other hand, the presence of resurrection magic takes credibility away from ending a campaign by killing the big bad guy. More than likely they'll be survived by loyal minions who would be willing to take a bit of their resources to someone capable of resurrecting them. Removing resurrection also removes the concern of having to fight a rematch with a villain who, when last the players saw him, was quite solidly dead, and may in that way make the end of a major battle more satisfying.

[skunk3]

I'm torn on the issue myself. While I think that DM's should definitely make games challenging for the PC's, they should give them a reasonable chance of success in whatever endeavor they are attempting unless stupidity is involved. I personally put a lot of thought into my characters and I am the kind of guy that will have a character planned out through level 20 including back story, drive, personality, feats, abilities, etc... by the time I'm level 2. (Yes, seriously.) I am definitely an optimizer and also just love coming up with complete character ideas, so if I were to play with a DM who loves to toss PC's through a meat grinder, I'd probably have less fun overall and also be WAY more of a rules lawyer type, quick to bicker about everything if it would give me an advantage or keep my character alive. That said, I play as though permadeath is the standard, but do base my decisions upon race/class/alignment/etc.

[Venger]

I'm in agreement that death can occur far too randomly, unexpectedly, and unavoidably to make resurrection altogether unavailable to the players. If you're doing to do a permadeath gave, you'll also need to pull your punches when it comes to save-or-die scenarios.

On the other hand, the presence of resurrection magic takes credibility away from ending a campaign by killing the big bad guy. More than likely they'll be survived by loyal minions who would be willing to take a bit of their resources to someone capable of resurrecting them. Removing resurrection also removes the concern of having to fight a rematch with a villain who, when last the players saw him, was quite solidly dead, and may in that way make the end of a major battle more satisfying.

I mean, you really should in the first place. save or dies/save or stop playings from the gm are bad game design. slamming a pc with an effect that harms or hinders them but allows them to continue playing the game is more fun for everyone than just turning them to stone.

If that's the case, the pcs should just do something besides killing him (trapping his soul, turning him into something, the purify water trick, etc). in standard D&D, you should really only kill people you want to see again.

[Yahzi]

My campaigns start at level 0, so they're pretty much perma-death most of the time anyway.

[King of Nowhere]

talk with your players and see what they think.

the main disadvantage is the risk of losing a character you've invested a lot of roleplaying into. I'd be really sad if my sandpaper-underpants-wearing monk were to die permanently, and he's still only level 6. I have still ideas to explore with him.

you can play with permadeath only if the players don't get too attached to the characters.

[Vaern]

in standard D&D, you should really only kill people you want to see again.
I can't figure out how to do it from my phone, but I'm going to have to remember to put this in my signature when I get home :p

[Venger]

I can't figure out how to do it from my phone, but I'm going to have to remember to put this in my signature when I get home :p

please feel free

[jmax]

If that's the case, the pcs should just do something besides killing him (trapping his soul, turning him into something, the purify water trick, etc). in standard D&D, you should really only kill people you want to see again.

What's the "purify water trick"?


In one game I play in, our modus operandi has been to abscond with the bodies. True resurrection doesn't exist in the game, so this prevents any sort of revival. As an added bonus, this greatly simplifies picking over the enemies' remains to see what's worth taking. It also has some pretty good role-playing flavor - it's spooky to find that everyone is just gone instead of finding a room full of corpses, and it adds some plausible deniability options as well.

One instance of that was when we (mostly accidentally) killed the monarch of half the starting continent while breaking into his palace to destroy a temple to an evil goddess. We knew the monarch was evil, but we hadn't expected him to respond personally to the attack (and in fact didn't find out it was him until afterward because his face was covered) and, frankly, shouldn't have been able to beat him anyway because he was way overpowered for us - but when we couldn't make anything stick, the shaman tried a desperation mummify, and he rolled a Natural 1 on his save. Destroy the altar, grab the bodies, hop back out the hole in the wall, teleport away. As an added bonus, the only enemy support that made it past the wall of thorns we used to clog all of the surrounding hallways had to teleport in, and he got tripped up by our mage's anticipate teleportation spell, which delayed his arrival by one round. So as far as he's can tell, he local-teleported in to the sound of desperate combat and arrived to find a desecrated and exploded altar, the whole room trashed, and neither the king nor the king's first two heirs (who responded with the king). As far as everyone else with him was concerned, the fighting stopped seconds after he teleported in, only nobody but him was there and there weren't any bodies, so he was left holding the bag.

The DM hadn't expected the king to be the first responder to the alarm - we just got (un?)lucky on the random routine table for him. It ended up being a major, unexpected change to the plot line farther down the road extending into the next campaign (which we'll be starting next year after wrapping this one up in a few months). The king's attendants ended up concocting a bogus story about him having transcended his mortal form and binding his spirit into the throne so he could reign as king eternally, and it touched off a massive civil war among his remaining twenty-something sons for who would get to be actually in charge because we also messed up the line of succession. It was pretty fantastic.

Just be sure to check the bad guys' pockets for portable holes before shoving them into the bag of holding if you play with that silly rule as written. (Far less obnoxious to say that one extradimensional storage device physically won't go into another - like trying to put a watermelon in a sandwich bag, it just doesn't go in.)

As an added bonus, absconding with the bodies allows you to cast speak with dead at their leisure to interrogate them posthumously. We did this so much and got so much great intelligence from it that our enemies instituted an organization-wide "no corpses" rule, dispatching non-combatants to hide and snatch or disintegrate the corpses of anyone who knew anything dangerous with any operation. Of course, the non-combatants had a dangerous job, and sometimes they ended up being just one more body on the pile - giving us that much more intelligence to work with.


That said, there are other alternatives besides absconding with the bodies or tying up the souls -
any mechanism for ensuring there's no discernible remains is sufficient (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0595.html) as long as true resurrection is off the table.


The other major advantage to working along those lines is that killing one PC is never a permanent hindrance - as long as the PCs still win in the end (or at least have a survivor manage to exfiltrate the other PCs' corpses), only a TPK causes the permanent end of a character.

Other options include removing raising spells that give you anything more than a few rounds of leeway - last breath or nothing.