[D&D 4e] Character Death and TPKs
Natespank:
Hey guys!
I suspect that PC deaths in many RPGs sometimes hurts the game.
In many cases it strongly rewards me to play the same character from the campaign's start to finish. One of my favorite characters ever was from a [Rifts] campaign, a bounty hunter named Moses who made it to level 8 (pretty high in Rifts). I aggressively played and often endangered my character in gambits which usually spectacularly succeeded, killing huge robots with bundles of fusion blocks modified with his weapons engineering to be remote-operated.
To achieve character longevity the GM decided to decrease the game's difficulty, and fudged a few rolls here or there if she liked what a character did. Nobody died that campaign, though there were a few serious injuries. It made our victories feel a little insignificant. I've played other campaigns where the low difficulty bored me, or where the high difficulty ran me through up to a dozen characters (old d&d, absurd haha).
In RPGs "epic wins" greatly reward the players, but if there's no or little chance of failure the reward shrinks. If there's a huge chance the players will fail it increases the victory's worth. However, to achieve that characters will inevitably die, or a TPK can result. In D&D, typically the player will then make a new character. In that Rifts campaign, had I had 5 characters instead of Moses I'd have been less happy with the campaign. Also, leveling a character from 1-X is way more rewarding than beginning at level Y and growing to X, that's why most RPGs default characters to begin at "level 1."
I think a DM could remedy this by allowing for character death and TPKs using mechanics that preserve characters after death. The normal method is to buy and use scrolls of Raise Dead for a ton of gold- early level characters can't really afford them though, and if a character dies in D&D 4e it's not an option to make a level 1 character and work your way back to your old level. The mechanics defeat the attempt so you have to create a new similar level character, which sucks because your new character has no history.
I think a better method is to hand out some scrolls of raise dead starting at level 3 or so, and give the character's tattoos which teleport the party and some gear to a resurrection stone and pay a cost for a full revive. This gives the PCs the chance to get licked and wake up groggy a few miles away jonesing for revenge, or plotting to grow stronger to overcome the challenge that killed them.
What do you guys think of this? Do you think characters should stay dead, do you think TPKs should cause campaign reboots, or that characters just shouldn't die? I'd like some feedback :D What's your experiences?
Natespank:
I can't find an edit button- I wanted to add something:
In almost every single computer/console game ever built the player can "die" or "fail" and usually restarts at an earlier point to try again. The chance of failure is essential to make rewards vivid. For example, the Legend of Zelda for NES is a HARD GAME. There's a huge chance that most players will never beat it- and you die a LOT. Those deaths made me dig in and grow determined to overcome the game, to "beat the game." Removing failure, or punishing it too greatly, would have ruined it or similar games.
Imagine DooM without death, or where death --> restarting.
Callan S.:
Hi Nate,
The thing is, if your coming back, then your not dead. It's not death. It'd be the same as your statement 'Nobody died that campaign'.
Now if you just want a kick in the nuts for losing a battle, fair enough. But that's not really an issue of character death, but how failure stings. Or in the context of a larger game/campaign, how much closer it gets you to failing the whole campaign (which at the very least means you don't get the happiest ending possible).
That's actually an issue - a gold cost for 'dying'/losing by itself kind of makes suceeding at a whole campaign insignificant, in a way. I mean, you fail, pay gold, earn gold through jobs and try again. You will never fail, unless you lack the stamina to keep trying again and/or can't be bothered anymore. It's like getting to top level in world of warcraft - it's not a matter of 'if', it's a matter of 'when'/'how long'.
So these questions of in the moment losing a battle kind of spill into the much larger context of a campaign.
Natespank:
What I mean is that character death is a tricky issue and it might work better to replace it in many ways with a "sting of failure" mechanic- at least in 4e where it's not feasible to create a level 1 character to tag along with your level 5 friends. I shouldn't have said death per se, but in my Rifts campaign we succeeded at everything we ever did because failure generally implied a TPK which nobody wanted- so the DM helped us along. There needs to be a failure mechanic is what I mean is most crucial- a way for the PCs to get whooped in combat here and there and it not be game over.
Using the tattoo idea can include real death too if the tattoo is chopped off the PC before death by a savvy NPC- if you can't recover the body, can't revive him, so still allows for death occasionally- just at important times and not in stupid encoutners with a swarm of drakes that nobody expected to be so strong :)
Kevin Vito:
One of my favorite resurrection stories comes from a 3.5 game I played in.
Caelath, the half-elf ranger/beguiler of the group was killed by drow. Our only means of bringing him back was with the druid's reincarnation spell. Caelath came back, but he was reincarnated as a halfling. This had all sorts of ramifications.
The character had a wife, you see. She didn't recognize him after he was reincarnated. Ouch.
To add insult to injury, the other characters, including the druid who performed the reincarnation spell, made fun of Caelath all the time, calling him 'shorty', 'stumpy', 'kid', etc.
I really liked that.
I feel that resurrection should have major consequences for characters.
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