"You died!" A 'soul-sy' approach to mortality in D&D

[Spore]

Hey guys,

I LOVE D&D. I love engaging fights. I am of the opinion that combat should dangerous in order to evoke SOME amount of emotion. (Sure, ressources attrition is a thing but you can't make 85% of your fights that.) And I don't want to fully embrace the Dark Souls-like narrative of hopeless struggle against certain demise - because D&D doesn't do nihilism very well. But on the same note I don't want to go the WoW-esque route of hollow celebration and level-ups (yay, you killed six giant rats and 27 kobolds, you are so great a sword fighter, have a level and a magical sword for it!).

How would you guys approach this? My campaign started off - before going on a 3 year hiatus - as being a pirate and merchantile campaign in a homebrew "totally-not-imperialistic-spain". The country's treasury is drained by a permanently employed assassin's guild that kills any foreign warlord that just mentions the idea of invading said land. Without that protection it would be invaded in no time (hostile neighbors, terrible land army, incredible navy). Of course the many merchants (it is a world broken up in shards and only their shard has enough portals to make trade with the western shards) would not be pleased by open war either (another reason open war is frowned upon).

In act I, the merchants and the nobles are piting their influences against each other, leading to a conflict under which the working class and slaves will suffer. (I'd say level 1-5)

In act II, a civil war will start with pirates (chaotic) robbing the king's and merchants' (lawful) ships to put pressure on them in order to improve their station and force a change in policy that makes slaves and workers equal citizens. This monetary pressure however removes the assassin's protection the crown. (level 6-9)

Act III will be defined by the heroes. Did they help the pirates or the merchants? Either the pirates win (equal rights for everyone, but the king is assassinated and the country declared war against) or the king and merchants win, killing the insurgents in ritualistic way that vastly increases an old one's power on the country (disguised as a CE kraken god), making him able to drown vast parts of the peninsula under the sea, effectively adding it to his portfolio. (level 10+)

I want the heroes to pick their fights accordingly - and to fight people because they think it furthers their goal in the campaign. If they attack the Halfling Admiral of the Royal fleet (Lv 10 halfling knight with a ship full of minions), on low levels, they WILL die.

They're in the city currently but they are accused of sabotaging a powder mill (it exploded 15 minutes after they left, when they successfully protected it against nightly pirate saboteurs - seemingly an inside job) so they are forced to sail the seas (they are asked by the inquisition to look into it, and as they are wanted criminals they won't be missed). Their ship will be sunk by a giant kraken, and they will be killed. However, they will wake up with a witch on an island that tells them, that it wasn't their time to die yet. For the small - involuntary - offering of a fragment of their soul, the deeps (actually the kraken god) ressurrected them in a state between death and life.

So what should I do? I planned on giving them an "estus-like" flakon of healing elixir (the original campaign was in Pathfinder so healing was hard to come by) but I feel like that is handled by short rests in 5e. I basically want to give them additional healing (that costs actions but is viable in combat) and "death tokens" that are rare and limit their ability to cheese deaths. Bonfires would simply be placed where they last rested. How would you limit these "humanities" or which other penalties would you incur for repeatedly dying?

I want this mechanic to have a voodoo-y, carribean feel while having enough excuse for them not to be really undead. I really want the heroes to stay the same throughout the campaign. Classes (Pathfinder and 5e equivalent) are a human noble oracle (noble favored soul sorcerer?), human freebooter ranger (sailor hunter ranger), fetchling summoner shadowcaller (chain fiend lock, shadow sorcerer, but there is nothing equivalent, i might just homebrew her race to be able to summon a permanent shadow with a shadow sorcerer but she does not get metamagic) and an ifrit bard (fire genasi swords/glamour bard). It is likely they want to reroll however since fitting pathfinder char ideas into D&D classes is something that wasnt quite popular when we tried it with another campaign. (And no, I will NOT DM Pathfinder if I take 18 hours just to build a simple character and still am missing that critical feat that breaks the character.)

[Dagda Mor]

You want to make D&D 5E combat more "dangerous," because you want the players to have more at stake- more they can lose. It might be wearing blinders to skip right to player mortality with limited resurrections.

Could take a page from XCOM instead. Have like, a larger "crew" that essentially includes 2 backup characters per PC. These function as lower level NPC allies (normally not on the front lines) but if a PC dies their torch has to pass to one of their surviving backup characters.

Alternately, have players who cheat death get maimed in some random way. Peg leg, eyepatch, hook hand, dwarf loses his beard.

[krugaan]

You're playing the Remaster, aren't you?

I just discovered how absurdly overpowered Dark Bead is.

[username1]

I thought about doing something similar a while back. I was going to have all my players die session one, no questions asked. Then the players would find themselves in the underworld dead, however using a similar system as you need. Here is my idea:

The Kraken god gives the players the ability to slowly channel his power. Effectively the Kraken god is trying to use the players as his agents. You could add mystery elements into the game as they slowly figure out whats going on. Every time a player dies more and more of their soul is owed to the Kraken. Their bodies start becoming look sea creatures like in the third and second Pirates of the Caribbean. I would also only allow a player to become resurrected when the party takes a rest and performs a ritual that the witch taught them.(Maybe it needs a sacrifice) You could also have the dead player have a conversation with this entity(the Kraken) without knowing who it is. Make his dark and mysterious and describe him behind a black curtain and truly creep the player out. Make his negotiate with the Kraken every time. The Kraken will only resurrect the player for a price, whatever they offer. Additionally every time they get a res give them additionally powers, but at a cost. They should feel urges to kill randomly and have to do dark acts to use the powers. Make the players fear for their characters sanity and soul. It adds a air of mystery in the game as they have to use the Krakens powers to stay alive(Make some of them crucial to the plot) but makes them feel guilty. This can make the game very dark and only do it if your players can handle it. Otherwise just copy pirates of the Caribbean with the looks and give them penalties like loss of items and stats.

Once a player gets a amount of res you see as too much take away the players control of the character. He is now a truly evil servant of the Kraken.

[Davrix]

You can just treat it like we do at my table.

The only spell that works is Revivify. No other resurrection magic works in our settings. We do extend the time limit to 2 minutes instead of one for the spell but that's about it. Short of a god or a wish bringing you back, death is permanent.

[Trask]

You're playing the Remaster, aren't you?

I just discovered how absurdly overpowered Dark Bead is.

3 words. Great Magic Barrier.

Another 2 words. Roll Backstab.

[Spore]

You're playing the Remaster, aren't you?

I just discovered how absurdly overpowered Dark Bead is.

Nope. Ain't gonna pay 20 euros for a texture mod and reintroducing old bugs :) but I got it in the Summer Sale of 2015 when I started DMing. The main reason I figured it could be necessary is because our resident power gamer decided on a Con 8 character this time. :smallannoyed:


I thought about doing something similar a while back. I was going to have all my players die session one, no questions asked. Then the players would find themselves in the underworld dead, however using a similar system as you need. Here is my idea:

The Kraken god gives the players the ability to slowly channel his power. Effectively the Kraken god is trying to use the players as his agents. You could add mystery elements into the game as they slowly figure out whats going on. Every time a player dies more and more of their soul is owed to the Kraken. Their bodies start becoming look sea creatures like in the third and second Pirates of the Caribbean. I would also only allow a player to become resurrected when the party takes a rest and performs a ritual that the witch taught them.(Maybe it needs a sacrifice) You could also have the dead player have a conversation with this entity(the Kraken) without knowing who it is. Make his dark and mysterious and describe him behind a black curtain and truly creep the player out. Make his negotiate with the Kraken every time. The Kraken will only resurrect the player for a price, whatever they offer. Additionally every time they get a res give them additionally powers, but at a cost. They should feel urges to kill randomly and have to do dark acts to use the powers. Make the players fear for their characters sanity and soul. It adds a air of mystery in the game as they have to use the Krakens powers to stay alive(Make some of them crucial to the plot) but makes them feel guilty. This can make the game very dark and only do it if your players can handle it. Otherwise just copy pirates of the Caribbean with the looks and give them penalties like loss of items and stats.

Once a player gets a amount of res you see as too much take away the players control of the character. He is now a truly evil servant of the Kraken.

That is a great idea. Problem is I am not good at improv, and not great at improvising mystery. Your words however made me realize that inflationary death is a video game mechanic and death ingame should be treated as a unique experience, not a generalized mechanic.

I think I will write up a personalized "death cut scene" for everyone once they drown the first time. The kraken god will revive them, no questions asked but they should feel a bit violated. Helplessness and imprisonment are major motifs for my characters anyway (bard is a prostitute, ranger is a slave, summoner is shackled by her dark powers and the noble is just now freed from her gilded cage).


You want to make D&D 5E combat more "dangerous," because you want the players to have more at stake- more they can lose. It might be wearing blinders to skip right to player mortality with limited resurrections.

Could take a page from XCOM instead. Have like, a larger "crew" that essentially includes 2 backup characters per PC. These function as lower level NPC allies (normally not on the front lines) but if a PC dies their torch has to pass to one of their surviving backup characters.

Alternately, have players who cheat death get maimed in some random way. Peg leg, eyepatch, hook hand, dwarf loses his beard.

This sounds very nice but it dilutes the story around the main characters somewhat. also my players are extremely fond of playing "their mains". I can really see a few oneshots where they play other characters to basically create exposition for the main plot. (they might play pirates or royal marines to explain the upcoming war between act 1 and 2 in some sort of "meanwhile" side adventure)


You can just treat it like we do at my table.

The only spell that works is Revivify. No other resurrection magic works in our settings. We do extend the time limit to 2 minutes instead of one for the spell but that's about it. Short of a god or a wish bringing you back, death is permanent.

Of course that is a possibility. But you first need to get know a high level cleric to cast this for you. And I prefer my high level clerics to be heavily politically involved. Of course the inquisition should or could have clerics capable of that. But I am unsure if they'd dish out the spells for replacable agents. They need some kind of bargain chip for this.

Come to think of it, I am unsure how the heroes would gain traction in the story. My original draft was the fleet admiral of the royal navy being in on the revolution because he couldnt watch the slaves and lowlifes suffer anymore. And subsequently the heroes would get a boat and discover the hidden base of the pirates. The witch would use the heroes' connection to the kraken to cast a divination to unveil the secret base. The pirates are aided by the cultists trying to destabilize the kingdom/empire.

But why would the kraken god revive the heroes when their job is to unveil the revolution? the only answer would be that he wants a stalemate so the entire nation is weakened.

[krugaan]

3 words. Great Magic Barrier.

Another 2 words. Roll Backstab.

I meant more from a pve perspective, but screw heavy armor guys.

I'm terrible at PVP, I always roll off ledges and get lagstabbed all the time.

[LudicSavant]

Speaking from experience as someone who runs games that my players have praised as capturing the thrill of Soulslike games in combat and exploration:

The general purpose of resurrection mechanics and the like is to allow you to feel like you can crank up the heat enough to really make the players sweat about the consequences of their decisions in-game, without making players have to bring a dozen spare character sheets. There are an awful lot of ways to accomplish this sort of thing and not all of them are resurrection-based, but they should generally tie into the nature of the specific adventure and your world. You don't want to make it free, but you don't want to make a death grind the game to a halt either.

One of the things you'll want to do when setting up a high-danger game is to try to change up the formula a bit so that PCs either tend to wipe out completely (such as a TPK), or everyone lives (but with setbacks and consequences, such as spending money on Revivify, losing out on quest objectives, and so forth). This is because you don't really want to create a lot of situations where one player is dead and left out of the game while all the others are alive. By contrast, the party actually TPKing can be less of an issue to the flow of the game than just one person going down (especially if the players can just wake up captured or get rescued or revive at a bonfire or some such thing... the game can continue).

One way to accomplish the above goal is by making "Revivify potions" (or an equivalent) readily available (if at a meaningful cost). This is because the effect of everyone having access to Revivify, in practice, is that a player generally doesn't stay down for longer than the length of a single encounter unless everyone went down.

You'll also want to make sure that your adventures are designed in such a way that players are under enough time pressure to avoid the "15 minute adventuring day."

Also, make sure that all of your combats pose dramatic questions (http://theangrygm.com/four-things-youve-never-heard-of-that-make-encounters-not-suck/) and make it possible to fail mission objectives in ways that have meaningful and lasting consequences. You can fail to rescue the hostage, to stop the villain from escaping, to reach the magic vault before it sinks into the sea, to protect the village from destruction, or to reach the macguffin before the rival adventuring party. Oh sure, you might have been able to resurrect, but the village is still burned to the ground. That sort of thing has more of an impact on players than XP costs and the like ever have. And it makes their victories feel all the sweeter and more meaningful.

Another thing that really makes Dark Souls stand out in its finest moments is that enemies feel that they have a certain... intentionality to them. While a standard videogame boss might do an attack pattern, pause, then walk up and expose its weak point and invite you to hit it... this feels very "gamey." And the more memorable bosses in Dark Souls avoid this entirely. Artorias? He feels like he's actually trying to hurt you. He doesn't just tank your attacks, he actually dodges them. He tries to buff himself by creating an actual opening to do so instead of just sitting there and doing it because it's just that time in the pattern. And when he knocks you down, he doesn't wait for you to get back up, he'll actually combo you to drive the point home. Basically, if you want your game to capture that feel of Dark Souls, you have to make very certain that your enemies feel like they're trying to hurt the protagonists, rather than simply acting like MMO fodder. Tucker's Kobolds is a popular D&D anecdote that can basically be summed up as players not used to encountering monsters with such intentionality... encountering monsters with such intentionality.

Note that this sort of intentionality isn't just a matter of difficulty. For example, Mr. Freeze in Arkham City isn't particularly difficult, but he's a good example of a boss who feels like he's trying to outplay you in the interest of his own objectives rather than merely existing as a soulless obstacle that wants to be conquered.

[Davrix]

Of course that is a possibility. But you first need to get know a high level cleric to cast this for you. And I prefer my high level clerics to be heavily politically involved. Of course the inquisition should or could have clerics capable of that. But I am unsure if they'd dish out the spells for replacable agents. They need some kind of bargain chip for this.

Sir Revivify is a level 3 spell. Thats why we use it. Its the low level shock paddles equivalent of going CLEAR on the battlefield and bringing someone back. Otherwise death is just death and short of a god or wish(not a guarantee method) spell as i said, you cannot come back.

[Eric Diaz]

Losing 1 point of Constitution is both old school-y and Dark Soul-y... just sayin'.

[LudicSavant]

Losing 1 point of Constitution is both old school-y and Dark Soul-y... just sayin'.

It might be "old school-y" but it's certainly not Dark Souls-y. You don't take permanent hits to your stats for dying in Dark Souls, and indeed some would say that such a mechanic would go against the core design philosophy of the game.

Dark Souls has a couple death mechanics available:

First, there is the default one. You die, lose all of your XP/gold currency where you died, and (depending on the Soulsborne title) is left on the ground or can possibly be picked up by a foe. In order to get your stuff back, you have to pick yourself up after your defeat, internalize what you've learned from your last run, and carefully proceed back to the last point you got to, proving that you can accomplish that distance consistently. Once you get there you can pick up your XP/gold currency from your bloodstain or from defeating an enemy who was nearby your bloodstain (and picked up your stuff).

Second, there are items that modify the death mechanic. The most notable one is probably buying an item from a merchant that breaks upon death, but allows you to resurrect with all of your XP/gold currency in tow. Essentially, it replaces the risk of fighting your way back to your corpse with an up-front cost and the loss of a ring slot.

Third, there's the difference between the "human" and more hollowed out form (the specifics vary between Soulsborne games). You usually have to accomplish some sort of goal in order to reverse this debuff, but it's not just a permanent loss to your stats.

[Trask]

Losing 1 point of Constitution is both old school-y and Dark Soul-y... just sayin'.

Hm, depends on which Dark Souls. In Dark Souls 2 it would be appropriate, since your maximum health goes down. But for Dark Souls 1 I think wisdom or maybe charisma would be more appropriate to represent loss of sanity. Or maybe instead some kind of custom table akin to a madness table?

[Trask]

It might be "old school-y" but it's certainly not Dark Souls-y. If anything, lowering your stats for failure fundamentally goes against the core game design philosophy underlying Dark Souls.

Well dark souls 2 you lost max hp down to half or so your max every time you died. I dont think that con damage would be bad, and it would be thematic to dark souls to some degree, since being human raises your resistance to curses and to poisons and such.

But I would make for a way to reverse your "hollowing" and get your Con back. Maybe one tough way, and one sinister way (like stealing it from your fellow men)

[LudicSavant]

Well dark souls 2 you lost max hp down to half or so your max every time you died.

Yes, but unlike the old-school method this is not a permanent stat loss, it's a debuff that you can cure by going out and accomplishing a task (just like dropping your souls at your bloodstain is a problem that can be resolved by rising to a new challenge).

I would say that the old-school "This Constitution loss cannot be repaired by any means" method is antithetical to the design precepts Miyazaki has described at some length. So, unrecoverable Con loss? Definitely old school, but definitely not Dark Souls. There's more thought to Soulsborne death mechanics than just making things punishing. They are very specifically designed to encourage certain player behaviors and psychological impacts.

An example of a more Souls-like take would be to have a more severely penalized form than -1 Con, that can be reversed by accomplishing some clear short-term task (like murdering someone who doesn't have the debuff, or acquiring an important resource like Humanity). The nature of this task should tie into the overall themes of the world and the structure of the kind of adventures you want to create.

[Eric Diaz]

I would say that the old-school "This Constitution loss cannot be repaired by any means" method is antithetical to the design precepts Miyazaki has described at some length. So, unrecoverable Con loss? Definitely old school, but definitely not Dark Souls. There's more thought to Soulsborne death mechanics than just making things punishing. They are very specifically designed to encourage certain player behaviors and psychological impacts.

An example of a more Souls-like take would be to have a more severely penalized form than -1 Con, that can be reversed by accomplishing some clear short-term task (like murdering someone who doesn't have the debuff, or acquiring an important resource like Humanity). The nature of this task should tie into the overall themes of the world and the structure of the kind of adventures you want to create.

I didn't mention any "cannot be repaired by any means" or "unrecoverable"... Was thinking of the DS 2 HP loss since the OP mentions "enough excuse for them not to be really undead".

I like the idea of recovering losses "by accomplishing some clear short-term task". Maybe you can recover 1 con per level, for example, but surely there are other, more interesting, ways.

Maybe sacrificing a (minor) magic item? Seems both relevant and similar to DS-2.

[LudicSavant]

I didn't mention any "cannot be repaired by any means" or "unrecoverable"

Fair enough. The old-school D&D version of Raise Dead con loss is specifically unrecoverable, so I thought that was what you meant when you said that it was "old-schooly."

[Spore]

Hm, depends on which Dark Souls. In Dark Souls 2 it would be appropriate, since your maximum health goes down. But for Dark Souls 1 I think wisdom or maybe charisma would be more appropriate to represent loss of sanity. Or maybe instead some kind of custom table akin to a madness table?

If we'd go DS 2, I would not decrease Con. That is just asking for a feedback loop of death. Either decrease hit dice (Con mod can stay) or subtract from the hit points (ala negative 3.5 levels). So the 3rd level ranger dying would have 2d10+6 HP.

Though I like having the stats as is and just adding in a madness from the DMG. Come to think of it, I'll give them a permanent madness (one which i dont tell them until they've triggered it) from the start and every time they die they add to its severity.

For example, the shadow caller summoner would get this: “There’s only one person I can trust. And only I can see this Special friend.” Does she actually see beyond the plane ethereal? Is this just a trick her mind plays? Is eldritch magic at work? One can't tell.

[Mordaedil]

For more fun, play AD&D 1st with Dark Soulsy themes over it. It gets ever more desparate as people try to stay alive with their terrible character stats.