Death and Retirement

[Rystil Arden]

Could we get a resolution on this issue? We've now got an actual character death, so it's a more urgent matter.

My personal preference is to get the character back in the game with a minimum of punishment. I don't believe characters should be punished for taking on dangerous challenges.

[Being Silly]

DM: As your character comes around the corner, you see a pair of absolutely normal butterflies. What do you do?
Player 1: My God! We could get hurt! I throw a fireball at them! That's 8d6 damage, reflex save for half.
DM: You have killed the butterflies!
Player 2: Wow! That was close, anyone need some healing?

[/Being Silly]

The rebuttal argument:

[Being Silly]
DM: You see the ancient demon in front of you, standing on a pile of treasure as it prepares to kill you all. Fortunately, you have the Talisman of Escape that the wise old man provided you for just this instance.

Player 1: OK, let's escape.
Player 2: You kidding? I checked, and if I roll a 20 on my scythe, that demon's toast. I'm staying.
Player 1: But if I don't roll a 20, you die...
Player 2: Who cares? I don't lose anything if I die, and if I do roll a 20, we win the entire adventure and the GM has to give us a CR 22 treasure!
[/being silly]

 

[orsal]

I'm in the "death must be something significant" camp. Death-defying courage ceases to be real courage if the there's no great risk of losing anything substantial. I'm not even sure that I'd oppose eliminating resurrection and raising dead altogether; however, that isn't the proposal before us.

Is it expected that the travel to the north will involve a little adventure to be roleplayed, or will we just waive our hands and say "You take Gorefoot to Sanctus. After paying XXX, he's alive again, one level lower."?

 

[Bront]

Death should have some significance, but at the same time, players should be able to reasonably avoid it. I think that, at low levels, we should be more forgiving (1st and 2nd) due to the inherant danger of a few lucky roles. But, after that, it should be much more costly.

On the xp penalty, I prefer one of the variants I heard where you loose the exp required to make your current level from your total, and you may still earn experience from the encounter you were killed in (Assuming your party was able to prove victorious in some way). So, a 3rd level character loosed 2,000 exp, and may earn some extra, so at worse it costs the character a level, but he/she should be close to making it back.

As for what to do with low level characters, perhaps the gods smile on young adventurers and penalize them much less, but the loose what they may have earned up to that point and are removed from the adventure (Perhaps there's a temple in Orussus they wake up at).

Not the best solution, but I think it could be a good compromise.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Well, the level loss system does penalise lower levels characters less currently, as they need less XP to level up

 

[Bront]

Yes, but lower level characters don't have other resources, and are unfortunately more likely to due due to a bad roll (See what happened with Cade, who almost died on a lucky crit). Plus, 1st level characters loose Con instead, which is realy rough.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yes, but lower level characters don't have other resources, and are unfortunately more likely to due due to a bad roll (See what happened with Cade, who almost died on a lucky crit). Plus, 1st level characters loose Con instead, which is realy rough.

That's true--the Con is really rough. Maybe they should lose all current XP instead?

 

[Bront]

That's true--the Con is really rough. Maybe they should lose all current XP instead?

I think that's a more forgiving solution.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I think that's a more forgiving solution.

Its also more consistent with the other penalties, which is nice. Since the 5,000 GP diamond is so huge at level 1, its probably OK that the penalty might be smaller for them. The other alternative is to give a flat -1000 for a dead level 1 character, which might let the character go to negative XP, potentially needing more than 1000 to get to level 2

 

[Bront]

The money is an issue as well. Maybe Joe is willing to sponsor youngins to be ressed once, by loaning them the money (and taxing them half their adventuring earnings till they pay off).

 

[LogicsFate]

Would it be so bad, just to let the low level character die?