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I am curious how "old school D&D gaming" handles deaths of high level characters (though, really, this applies to anyone playing D&D anywhere ever). We all know that low level characters can often die, and depending on how stereotypical the "fantasy vietnam" game is, they die in droves.

But eventually a few characters always scrounge their way past the heap of the dead and make it to higher levels, often enshrining themselves a central place in the campaign. These characters, being the ones who were there from the start, often end up driving the adventure. They're the ones the parties are built around.

How do you handle the death of such characters? They have the potential to end the campaign or dissolve the party if everyone else was mostly tagging along. It's also a big blow to lose a character after investing so much time in them.

Do you just let them die, and let the campaign die if that's the natural result? Or should one put ways to bring the character back, or avoid the death altogether?

If it's true "old school D&D," there is no such thing as "the party."  Each player will have several characters that they play at different times; I had a high level fighter (Gronan) and a low level magic user (Lessnard).  In addition, henchmen can be played as a player character as well.  So if Gronan had bit the big one, I could have taken over playing one of my hencmen.  The other would have wandered off on their own destinies, but I could have played them at other times as well.

Also, the players vary from session to session as well as the PCs varying from session to session.

Old school D&D is the antithesis of "one group of heroes tried and true welded together at the hip."  It is "a number of adventurous neer-do-wells who cross one another's paths from time to time."

The world, and the campaign, are far bigger than any one character.

Ah, so there's no main quest of sorts, so there's no big deal if one group dissolves because they were never going to stick around in the first place.

What about a character dying after spending a lot of time investing in them? Would that make you not want to invest in future ones because it was a waste?

Totally subjective.

One player will take it well and laugh it off if its an ignominious end or feel proud if its a heroic end.
One player will take it badly no matter. They may quit. They may bitch. They may blame the DM for their own screwup. They may blame the game, the dice, whatever.
One player will shrug and start anew. So what?

Everyone reacts differently. There is no one answer.

Quote from: Omega;1018121Totally subjective.

One player will take it well and laugh it off if its an ignominious end or feel proud if its a heroic end.
One player will take it badly no matter. They may quit. They may bitch. They may blame the DM for their own screwup. They may blame the game, the dice, whatever.
One player will shrug and start anew. So what?

Everyone reacts differently. There is no one answer.

Well, I think the way a game handles it can definitely influence how players react too. Take for instance games like DCC with a 0-level funnel. Everyone goes in expecting those PCs to die, and you don't invest much mental effort into those characters, so when they die it's no big deal. But conversely, you won't really care what happens to them because they're just throwaway characters.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum there's characters people spend a ton of time lovingly detailing, but then if they die it's a much harsher fate.

I certainly would let them die, if that's the natural outcome of play. But old school D&D rules tend to make high level PCs robust, and also tend to make the players of high level PCs highly skilled! So it's not a common event. And it tends to be a dramatic, epochal event when it happens.

I think it was in 2016 I last saw a really high level PC perma-death: At the climax of my BECMI campaign, my son's PC the Duke-Sultan William of Castellan/Karameikos/Alasiya, an MU 18 (boosted to 19th caster via Ioun stone) was pressing home the attack against the Heldannic Knights during the Soderfjord invasion of Ostland. He had just nailed the Heldannic Knights-Marine with a well-placed fireball as their Warbird's bay doors opened, saving his party from being overrun by a couple dozen high level Fighters, when he was Disintegrated by the Heldannic Warbird's Bile Belcher cannon. AIR he was targetted 3 in 6 and would have survived on a roll of 4+ on d20, but made me roll and I got a 2.  William was gone, after years of play (he had started at 4th around 4 years previously, when my son was only 5 years old!) but his side was victorious, King Hord Darkeye of Ostland was defeated, his kingdom conquered, and William was mourned by an assembly of high level heroes, including his son Bravery the new Duke-Sultan, the High Priestess Lady Roseanna and Baroness Alexandra Vorloi, all great champions in their own right.

In that case I was already planning to end the campaign with that session, although I did end up doing some epilogue stuff.

No very high level (15+) PCs have perma-died in my 5e Wilderlands sandbox game yet; High Priest Thuruar (Clr-15) did perish to the hellfire ball of the Death Knight Varek Tigerclaw*, but Hakeem the Barbarian defeated Varek and was able to get Thuruar raised by Lady Meda of Thusia. If a really major PC like Hakeem (now Barbarian-20) did die it would certainly alter the campaign (Hakeem's newly founded empire would almost certainly collapse, for a start) - but it certainly wouldn't end the campaign.

*A former PC reanimated by the Necromancer Borritt Crowfinger, BBEG of the campaign for many years until his final demise a few months ago. :)

If you get killed, you die and roll up a new one unless you are somehow revived. No kid gloves or special treatment. Death comes to everyone sooner or later.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018120Ah, so there's no main quest of sorts, so there's no big deal if one group dissolves because they were never going to stick around in the first place.

The open campaign is bigger than any one quest, but I've seen major (like 20+ session) quests emerge from play, like the time a group of PCs decided to quest far to the north of the normal campaign area to find and destroy the Gate Castle of the Black Sun. We still had a fair bit of PCs swapping in and out over those 20+ sessions, but I'd say there were 3 core PCs, and if all had died then that particular quest might logically have been abandoned/failed.

If it's my high level character I tend to let them die. I always felt it was kind of cheap to be raised from the dead. Far better to have a heroic death and play a new character. If death is just a temporary inconvenience it really takes the edge off dangerous situations.

Quote from: S'mon;1018124I certainly would let them die, if that's the natural outcome of play. But old school D&D rules tend to make high level PCs robust, and also tend to make the players of high level PCs highly skilled! So it's not a common event. And it tends to be a dramatic, epochal event when it happens.

I think it was in 2016 I last saw a really high level PC perma-death: At the climax of my BECMI campaign, my son's PC the Duke-Sultan William of Castellan/Karameikos/Alasiya, an MU 18 (boosted to 19th caster via Ioun stone) was pressing home the attack against the Heldannic Knights during the Soderfjord invasion of Ostland. He had just nailed the Heldannic Knights-Marine with a well-placed fireball as their Warbird's bay doors opened, saving his party from being overrun by a couple dozen high level Fighters, when he was Disintegrated by the Heldannic Warbird's Bile Belcher cannon. AIR he was targetted 3 in 6 and would have survived on a roll of 4+ on d20, but made me roll and I got a 2.  William was gone, after years of play (he had started at 4th around 4 years previously, when my son was only 5 years old!) but his side was victorious, King Hord Darkeye of Ostland was defeated, his kingdom conquered, and William was mourned by an assembly of high level heroes, including his son Bravery the new Duke-Sultan, the High Priestess Lady Roseanna and Baroness Alexandra Vorloi, all great champions in their own right.

In that case I was already planning to end the campaign with that session, although I did end up doing some epilogue stuff.

No very high level (15+) PCs have perma-died in my 5e Wilderlands sandbox game yet; High Priest Thuruar (Clr-15) did perish to the hellfire ball of the Death Knight Varek Tigerclaw*, but Hakeem the Barbarian defeated Varek and was able to get Thuruar raised by Lady Meda of Thusia. If a really major PC like Hakeem (now Barbarian-20) did die it would certainly alter the campaign (Hakeem's newly founded empire would almost certainly collapse, for a start) - but it certainly wouldn't end the campaign.

*A former PC reanimated by the Necromancer Borritt Crowfinger, BBEG of the campaign for many years until his final demise a few months ago. :)

What was his reaction to the death?

Quote from: S'mon;1018128The open campaign is bigger than any one quest, but I've seen major (like 20+ session) quests emerge from play, like the time a group of PCs decided to quest far to the north of the normal campaign area to find and destroy the Gate Castle of the Black Sun. We still had a fair bit of PCs swapping in and out over those 20+ sessions, but I'd say there were 3 core PCs, and if all had died then that particular quest might logically have been abandoned/failed.

If people come and go based on whatever quest their PC is interested in, what happens if your one PC is interested in something nobody else is? Does that mean you have to rely on coincidence to be able to join whatever session is happening? Like, I could imagine 20 different PCs, with like 12 different goals spread between them, making a fairly fractured group that may never actually get together in any real combination.

Quote from: Fiasco;1018131If it's my high level character I tend to let them die. I always felt it was kind of cheap to be raised from the dead. Far better to have a heroic death and play a new character. If death is just a temporary inconvenience it really takes the edge off dangerous situations.

I play with a guy who will get tired of or restless with his characters and will engage in suicide missions...sometimes he dies a glorious a death and rolls up a new guy, sometimes his mission succeeds legendarily, which sometimes will reengage him with his PC, sometimes he dies a pathetic death and rolls up a new guy...

In those kinds of games, do the PCs ever bond with each other and have any roleplaying? Or is it more like a "society of anarchists" thing where everyone is a loner after their own quest but just happens to be on the same quest alongside a bunch of other people?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018120What about a character dying after spending a lot of time investing in them? Would that make you not want to invest in future ones because it was a waste?

No it would not.

We were wargamers.  You will lose forces.  It happens.

Also, the old epics always end with the hero's death.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018136In those kinds of games, do the PCs ever bond with each other and have any roleplaying? Or is it more like a "society of anarchists" thing where everyone is a loner after their own quest but just happens to be on the same quest alongside a bunch of other people?

Depends on the players.

I have an extremely low mortality rate in my campaigns ... partly due to playing GURPS, which while it's relatively easy to incapacitate a character is not at all easy to one-shot-instakill one, and partly due to what I call the Tasha Yar Rule, which boils down to that I'm not going to kill a PC for no better reason than a grunt orc made a good roll.

But that being said, risk is part of the milieu.  If you don't want to risk a high-level character, don't take him into risky situations.  If you do, accept that death is a possible outcome.  What, do your GMs whine when you kill Big Bads?

And on the flip side, if a high-level character getting whacked puts paid to the "campaign" or the plot arc, start a new one around the survivors.  Shouldn't be any more of a big deal than starting a new campaign for any other reason involving character death or retirement.  Heck, how many times have we seen high-level characters leave campaigns because the players moved, schedules changed, personality conflicts kicked in, or any number of the usual reason?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018132What was his reaction to the death?

Some tears, but he took it manfully, especially for a nine year old. :cool: Since his PC was almost an Archmage I accepted his request for a 'force ghost' scene where Sultan William appeared to his widow & mother of his 4 children, Princess-Sultana Adriana the daughter of King Stefan Karameikos, back in Karameikos where it had all begun 25 game years & 4 real years before. He bid her a very touching farewell & departed to the higher worlds.

QuoteIf people come and go based on whatever quest their PC is interested in, what happens if your one PC is interested in something nobody else is? Does that mean you have to rely on coincidence to be able to join whatever session is happening? Like, I could imagine 20 different PCs, with like 12 different goals spread between them, making a fairly fractured group that may never actually get together in any real combination.

Well if the player is playing online or if I see them regularly offline (eg my son Bill) then I can do them solo sessions. Eg Bill has a plan for Shieldbiter his Barbarian-17 Dragonborn to solo the ancient black dragon Matriarx of Dread Isle, we'll do that at a suitable time. If the player can only make my regularly scheduled Sunday tabletop sessions then I would need to resolve any solo plans abstractly. If they don't want to take part in a particular quest the others want then they could sit that out, make a new PC for that quest etc.

Normally players & PCs are happy to team up for adventure, whoever's idea it is, as there are rewards in fun, gold, XP etc. But I do see stuff vetoed, eg the PC Hakeem refused Shieldbiter's request to help him go up against the ancient red dragons beneath Fortress Badabaskor, rumoured to possess the sacred Dragon Armour and Dragon Shield of ancient Arkhosia.

Edit: Rely on coincidence - yes just like in the comics (Savage Sword of Conan, notably) and pulps, heroes are always running into each other in unlikely circumstances. :D But I also have a home base, Selatine port village, that serves as the heart of the campaign, the starting point for (most) new PCs & PC groups, etc. With lots of PCs based there they naturally interact and form adventurer parties.

Oh, also re the tabletop element, I would be willing to run up to two separate groups on alternate weeks if necessary, if the PCs split up. And I have a co-GM who helps out, running the Bratanis region, a low level campaign area west of Selatine. PCs can go back and forth from there, being GM'd by him one week then me the next.

Quote from: Ravenswing;1018140partly due to what I call the Tasha Yar Rule, which boils down to that I'm not going to kill a PC for no better reason than a grunt orc made a good roll.

Mileage... I *love* it when some mook NPC gets lucky and takes down a high level PC or BBEG! :D Not something I see often in 5e, but the Blight Belcher disintegrator cannon that took out legendary wizard Duke-Sultan William Karameikos was crewed by zero level nobodies... Who were then swiftly dispatched by the furious Sir Bravery, William's elder son, in a rage worthy of Achilles.

Bill also lost his level 8 Dragonborn Fighter Drakonok to a horde of mook orcs a few weeks ago - turns out that in 5e challenging an entire orc tribe to battle is not such a great idea. Mind you when Drakonok's companions (who had fled the orc horde summoned by Drakonok's roared challenge) came back across the scene an hour or so later, the breath-frozen, stabbed, and arrow-pierced orc bodies were piled high in the corridors of Stonehell.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018132If people come and go based on whatever quest their PC is interested in, what happens if your one PC is interested in something nobody else is? Does that mean you have to rely on coincidence to be able to join whatever session is happening? Like, I could imagine 20 different PCs, with like 12 different goals spread between them, making a fairly fractured group that may never actually get together in any real combination.

Any campaign needs to have an underlying goal that all adventurers can work with (say, seeking treasure or glory or whatever) that makes them compatible enough to adventure together. If you have players constantly making up characters that can't work with the characters of other players (to at least set aside their underlying goal simply to gain treasure, magic items and experience) then it sounds like they're trying to undermine the campaign.

With very high level characters, they can form parties implicitly to some extent - if everyone else is playing their high level character then you play your high level character, and so you end up with the same party as the last high level adventure, unless everyone has multiple high level characters. (On the other hand, DMs back when would run for a single player with henchmen/followers/etc, so it's not inevitable, and less so if there's a very large group of players.) I've adventured with many of the same characters in higher level organized play, because many players only have one character of higher level, and organized play requires a minimum number of players - same players at the table means same high level characters. The permanent loss of one of those characters would just mean that that player doesn't play at the higher level table until another character reaches a high enough level.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018132If people come and go based on whatever quest their PC is interested in, what happens if your one PC is interested in something nobody else is? Does that mean you have to rely on coincidence to be able to join whatever session is happening? Like, I could imagine 20 different PCs, with like 12 different goals spread between them, making a fairly fractured group that may never actually get together in any real combination.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Solo sessions are marvellous fun, and very highly prized.

And with all those people wandering around interacting with the various NPCs, the world will continue chugging along beautifully with the referee just figuring out NPC reactions to all these different players' antics.

Quote from: rawma;1018157With very high level characters, they can form parties implicitly to some extent

IME very high level PCs in sandbox open game tend to get played less often; they tend to be focused on political shenanigans rather than adventuring, and the player will start to spend more time with their lower level PCs adventuring in lower level parties. Eg in my Wilderlands currently one player has PCs of levels 5, 9 & 20, another has 4, 5 and 17, a third has 5 & 13. A 4th or 5th level PC can adventure with third or eighth level PCs, an 8th level can adventure with 5th or 13th, but very high level characters tend to dominate too much, aren't challenged by most adventures, & often have better things to do.

Quote from: rawma;1018157The permanent loss of one of those characters would just mean that that player doesn't play at the higher level table until another character reaches a high enough level.

One thing I learned running an open sandbox campaign was to limit PC starting level; I settled on 8th as the maximum starting level, being the high end of what feels like mid-level in 5e.  It doesn't work letting everyone roll up new 20th level PCs just because one guy got a character to 20th. Characters need to feel organically part of the world, and keeping them to 8th initially ensures that.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018136In those kinds of games, do the PCs ever bond with each other and have any roleplaying?

I find the more PCs are independent entities, not just part of The Party gestalt, the more roleplaying I see, and the more interesting interpersonal relationships form among the PCs.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1018158This is a feature, not a bug.

Solo sessions are marvellous fun, and very highly prized.

Agreed! A one on one solo adventure is an awesome way to play.  Doesn't happen often though.

Back in the AD&D days, there were 5-10 Players in the pool, all of which had 2-10 Characters each.  There were three main groups, with some crossover and multiple smaller groups, with two active GMs.  The shared campaign was what held everything together.  There were half a dozen major events/quests/undertakings happening at any one time, with lots of smaller things going on.

With high-level magic, a lot of deaths were temporary, but the higher level you go, the rarer death becomes, but it also tends to become more permanent due to the nature of the opposition.  Generally, the players had a "no man left behind" attitude and would sometimes risk TPKs of multiple parties to bring back a compatriot.

Of course, there was also a lot of cross-purposes, betrayals, PvP, wars, and all the stuff you can expect from so many different PCs.

It's hardly fool proof, but by the time the average player gets a character up high enough, they are at least a little smarter than they were when they started.  If nothing else, from all those experiences of losing low-level characters.  It's the primary reason that I don't pull punches at low-levels.  Whatever else happens, you don't usually want a new player to experience their first character death after running the same character for years.  Well, unless they were already smarter than your average bear when they started, and maybe a little luckier.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1018138No it would not.

We were wargamers.  You will lose forces.  It happens.

Also, the old epics always end with the hero's death.

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Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1018172Whatever else happens, you don't usually want a new player to experience their first character death after running the same character for years.  Well, unless they were already smarter than your average bear when they started, and maybe a little luckier.

That's actually the exact situation that made me ask this OP.

The two highest leveled players are the guys who have had their same original PC from Day 1, two years ago. The rest have gone through multiple PCs. But these two are still on their very first.

Quote from: S'mon;1018160IME very high level PCs in sandbox open game tend to get played less often; they tend to be focused on political shenanigans rather than adventuring, and the player will start to spend more time with their lower level PCs adventuring in lower level parties. Eg in my Wilderlands currently one player has PCs of levels 5, 9 & 20, another has 4, 5 and 17, a third has 5 & 13. A 4th or 5th level PC can adventure with third or eighth level PCs, an 8th level can adventure with 5th or 13th, but very high level characters tend to dominate too much, aren't challenged by most adventures, & often have better things to do.

I'm mostly talking about organized play, where you don't get to play in the third tier module unless you have a character who is 11th to 16th level - the characters are forced to be of similar level. And you tend to see the same characters at the third tier tables if you play there with the same other players, because mostly players don't have multiple third tier characters, but you can always have another 1st level (1st tier) character and it's not hard to bring a starting character to 5th level (2nd tier). A year ago it was hard to get any 4th tier tables, because not enough players had 4th tier characters; two years ago I don't know how many organized play modules for 4th tier existed.

Way back, high level characters did tend to retire, but would adventure again if something significant in the game world came up, and that would often draw out other players' high level characters. So a similar effect happened then; nobody expected a much lower level character to survive, let alone contribute, if there was a real challenge to the high level characters, so the PCs were all of similar levels.

Quote from: S'mon;1018161One thing I learned running an open sandbox campaign was to limit PC starting level; I settled on 8th as the maximum starting level, being the high end of what feels like mid-level in 5e.  It doesn't work letting everyone roll up new 20th level PCs just because one guy got a character to 20th. Characters need to feel organically part of the world, and keeping them to 8th initially ensures that.

Again, in organized play you have to bring the character up from 1st level. (Adventurers League has a couple of oddities; you can use downtime to advance a 4th level character to 5th, and a 10th level character to 11th - for the former it is certainly the case that 4th level is a slog to get to 5th level without it, since the first tier adventures don't award much experience. The other oddity is GM XP, which was criticized in the other thread about 5e.)

I have rarely played in a campaign where characters started at higher level; and in those where they did, they usually were much weaker because they lacked the magic items or NPC contacts or knowledge of the world that the PCs who didn't start at higher level had acquired. But I've also rarely played in campaigns that didn't support multiple DMs, so you could find a level appropriate table to join.

Quote from: Madprofessor;1018165Agreed! A one on one solo adventure is an awesome way to play.  Doesn't happen often though.

I like doing online solo high level political stuff, and some PCs like Hakeem the Conanesque barbarian PC are great to GM solo. Mostly though for tabletop I greatly prefer GMing a group, ideally 3+ players; these days I tend to feel a bit awkward running solo games, and there is the lack of player-player interaction sparking new stuff.

Quote from: rawma;1018210Again, in organized play you have to bring the character up from 1st level. (Adventurers League has a couple of oddities; you can use downtime to advance a 4th level character to 5th, and a 10th level character to 11th - for the former it is certainly the case that 4th level is a slog to get to 5th level without it, since the first tier adventures don't award much experience.

I was just reading Xanathar's Guide, which gives advancement rules for AL. It says that PCs advance every 4 hours of play in Tier 1, every 8 hours Tier 2+? This seemed very fast to me BTW, I prefer about twice that number of hours played on average, slower at very high level.

Mike Mearls elaborated on the "4 hours" thing.

It's "4 hours" of progress. So if the module says "it should take 4 hours to reach X point," that's what it means. It's kind of a milestone system. Ideally it should be 4 hours, but if they do it in 10 hours in actual practice, it's the same thing as 4 hours.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018230Mike Mearls elaborated on the "4 hours" thing.

It's "4 hours" of progress. So if the module says "it should take 4 hours to reach X point," that's what it means. It's kind of a milestone system. Ideally it should be 4 hours, but if they do it in 10 hours in actual practice, it's the same thing as 4 hours.

Yes, it does say that - so really it's an XP system, a "4 hour adventure" is worth 4 XP. And you get a bonus for lower Tier PC completing higher Tier adventure.
It's not a bad system - basically it's 4 or 8 XP to Level - but about twice as fast as I like for regular campaign play. I guess with all PCs starting at 1st, and often playing different PCs, having a fast CRPG type advancement rate for AL makes sense. For regular campaign play I wouldn't want PCs going from 1 to 20 in 136 hours of play. I find for 5e that about 2 sessions/8 hours works well for 1st>2nd and 2nd>3rd, then about 4 sessions/16 hours per level after that. In practice using the 5e system it's often just 1 session 1>2, and I've seen PCs go straight from 1st to 3rd or 2nd to 4th, but it settles down after that.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018207That's actually the exact situation that made me ask this OP.

The two highest leveled players are the guys who have had their same original PC from Day 1, two years ago. The rest have gone through multiple PCs. But these two are still on their very first.

Then my recommendation is that, if at all feasible any time soon, run a one-shot adventure or two, with new low-level characters, that is deliberately designed to be rough on the characters.  Give these players a solid chance to get a character killed, or at least feel like they only made it due to smarts and/or luck.  

You can ratchet up difficulty in an existing game, especially if you explicitly explain that you intend to do so before it starts.  But the effort is not without risks, not the least of which is that you might not strike a good balance, and thus get unintended side effects.  The worst thing you can do--even worse than a TPK--is tell the players you intend to make the game tougher, and then they still walk all over everything.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018117How do you handle the death of such characters?

The same way that I deal with the death of any high-level character, PC or NPC. There shall be ripples in the pond, and they may impact anyone.

QuoteThey have the potential to end the campaign or dissolve the party if everyone else was mostly tagging along.

Which is why it's important to not let "everyone tagging along" happen;).

QuoteIt's also a big blow to lose a character after investing so much time in them.

Don't get them killed, then.

QuoteDo you just let them die, and let the campaign die if that's the natural result?

If a campaign can die because of a character death, so be it:D!

QuoteOr should one put ways to bring the character back, or avoid the death altogether?

To the latter: no. To the former: if it fits the setting, and only then.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018117Do you just let them die, and let the campaign die if that's the natural result?

Yes.

QuoteOr should one put ways to bring the character back, or avoid the death altogether?

No. What? They weren't OP enough already? Why even use game mechanics if you're going to overrule them when you get a result you find upsetting?

It seems to me it would undermine the entire experience - the effort, tension, stakes, removing pretty much all of the danger supposedly being faced, as if GMs who would consider doing that don't already try to make everything artificially calculated to have the players not get killed, anyway.

And if you're so worried about players enjoying a certain version of what happens in the game, how about the players who have been living in the shadow of the higher-level characters as you described? So, they're to be forced to never have the opportunity to possibly adventure without the now-imortalized PC?

It'd be enough to answer it for me just to notice how much it limits what's possible in the game if some PCs aren't allowed to die and the GM will use his _deus ex machina_ to not let that happen. Having the universe behave consistently and not bend to be nice to certain players is really important. Death, disaster and failure need to be real possibilities, and in fact lead to some of the most interesting, tense and unpredictable situations.

But... but... but... what if it gives their dinkie a sad?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1018334But... but... but... what if it gives their dinkie a sad?

Why is that my problem?

Quote from: S'mon;1018228I was just reading Xanathar's Guide, which gives advancement rules for AL. It says that PCs advance every 4 hours of play in Tier 1, every 8 hours Tier 2+? This seemed very fast to me BTW, I prefer about twice that number of hours played on average, slower at very high level.

Although it says those are the rules for AL, they aren't the current rules. Currently, XP, gold and items are awarded in the usual way, albeit with specific limits and rules for how permanent items are distributed. Note that Xanathar's Guide came out in the middle of season 7, and official sources merely observe that they don't change the AL rules in the middle of a season. So it's a good chance they will implement those rules (to some degree) in the next season, but they haven't yet.

(To some extent, they can already control the rate of advancement in modules, since the published modules have a minimum and maximum XP award which overrides the computed XP if it's outside that range. But the lower level characters in a tier will advance faster with that than higher level characters in the same adventures, because of the differences in XP needed for a level, and the minimums I've encountered will not suffice to advance characters in the upper end of a tier in anything like four or eight hours. And the campaign books are run for AL with straight XP rules, although sometimes by milestone advancement at low levels - e.g., the first tier chapter of Storm King's Thunder.)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1018138Also, the old epics always end with the hero's death.

That would be, in part, because his epic isn't done until the hero dies the final death.

Quote from: AsenRG;1018290If a campaign can die because of a character death, so be it:D!

I like it. It's the best way to kill a campaign.  When the hero dies, the story is over.  All campaigns are either comedy or tragedy.

Quote from: Madprofessor;1018762I like it. It's the best way to kill a campaign.  When the hero dies, the story is over.  All campaigns are either comedy or tragedy.

Tragedy plus time equals comedy.

If it happens to you it's tragedy.
If it happens to somebody else it's comedy.

Actually, a related question: how do you guys feel about long term campaigns ending in a TPK?

This isn't "two sessions in and everybody wipes," but having played for years and made it to a final boss, and then getting destroyed.

Good, bad? Just play it out and let it end on a sad note? Give them a way out?

First, don't have final bosses.

Second, why does the campaign end?  Were they the only people in the world?

The old heroes die, new heroes are born, the world continues.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1018794First, don't have final bosses.

Second, why does the campaign end?  Were they the only people in the world?

The old heroes die, new heroes are born, the world continues.

Well, it won't be over in the sense of play stopping. But the next line of heroes could start literally the next day after the TPK in-game, or it could be ten years later after the bad guy they were fighting has won. That is the sense it would be a "final boss." They already went through like 3 TPKs and new parties, but now the timetable is almost at the end, and if they don't win this time, then the bad guy will have completed his objective. Then the face of the setting will change.

I suppose you're saying to just let them die then, regardless of whether it would feel like years of time had been wasted. I am actually somewhat in agreement with this, but I have my doubts.

Ask a comic book fan who his favorite character is. Then ask them what their favorite story involving that character is. About nine times out of ten they will say it's an "Imaginary story", Elseworlds, "What If?", alternate world, or alternate future story like Old Man Logan, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, The Punisher : The End, or some other tale where the hero died, retired, took over the world, or otherwise finally got some kind of conclusion and climax.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;1018796Ask a comic book fan who his favorite character is. Then ask them what their favorite story involving that character is. About nine times out of ten they will say it's an "Imaginary story", Elseworlds, "What If?", alternate world, or alternate future story like Old Man Logan, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, The Punisher : The End, or some other tale where the hero died, retired, took over the world, or otherwise finally got some kind of conclusion and climax.

That is as an audience member though, not your own character. Also they always come back to life eventually.

Hmm, maybe the new party's goal could be reviving the old party...

Four of the players in my decades-long D&D campaign voluntarily retired characters after they got them to a point where, I guess, they felt like they "Won", or at least had a nice stopping point (Two took over domains, two married NPCs). They exited the stage of their own volition and effectively started over with new low-level characters. This was their own idea.

Is this common? Uncommon? Do most players keep playing a PC until they absolutely can't anymore?

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;1018801Four of the players in my decades-long D&D campaign voluntarily retired characters after they got them to a point where, I guess, they felt like they "Won", or at least had a nice stopping point (Two took over domains, two married NPCs). They exited the stage of their own volition and effectively started over with new low-level characters. This was their own idea.

Is this common? Uncommon? Do most players keep playing a PC until they absolutely can't anymore?

Usually, yes. But what you mentioned is an exception, because they got to retire on their own terms. They had their "happy ending." But it might be different if they all got turned to stone at the climax of their victory or something by a medusa.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018782Actually, a related question: how do you guys feel about long term campaigns ending in a TPK?

This isn't "two sessions in and everybody wipes," but having played for years and made it to a final boss, and then getting destroyed.

Good, bad? Just play it out and let it end on a sad note? Give them a way out?

This is only a meaningful question in single-party campaigns, especially linear ones with one goal. My Wilderlands sandbox has lots of different PC groups and a TPK would not be an issue; TPK of a very high level group probably means a big victory for some bad guys (or good guys!) but the world goes on.

In a single-party campaign, the group wipes, I may use that setting again later. Again BBEG victory will change the campaign world but it likely is still useable. I certainly won't fudge to keep them alive. It makes the game meaningless if the PCs can't lose.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;1018801Four of the players in my decades-long D&D campaign voluntarily retired characters after they got them to a point where, I guess, they felt like they "Won", or at least had a nice stopping point (Two took over domains, two married NPCs). They exited the stage of their own volition and effectively started over with new low-level characters. This was their own idea.

Is this common? Uncommon? Do most players keep playing a PC until they absolutely can't anymore?

In multi-PC games it's very common to retire or semi-retire the high level ones. Eg in my Wilderlands Hakeem Godslayer defeated the Black Sun, reached 20th level, founded the Empire of Altanis-Nerath. He's now basically retired from play, the player has a 5th & a 9th level PC for regular adventuring.

In an Adventure Path type game everyone plays the same one PC to the end of the campaign.

Based on experience and what I see in a lot of responses here and elsewhere, I think, perhaps more than most things, the key to getting that "Living World" feel is multiple PCs, multiple parties.  The more PCs a player has running around doing their own thing, the more it will more like a world and less like one PCs personal story.

Quote from: Madprofessor;1018762I like it. It's the best way to kill a campaign.  When the hero dies, the story is over.  All campaigns are either comedy or tragedy.

...I'm not sure what's your point, so I'm going to abstain from replying.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018782Actually, a related question: how do you guys feel about long term campaigns ending in a TPK?

This isn't "two sessions in and everybody wipes," but having played for years and made it to a final boss, and then getting destroyed.

Anyone that kills you is a final boss:).

QuoteGood, bad?

Beyond either;).
It just happens.

QuoteJust play it out and let it end on a sad note?

Yes.
"As you fall, you see the future Tyrant of the World As We Used To Know It smile, and return to his experiments. Your deaths will be whispered for in forbidden legends, the agents of the TotWaWUtKi persecuting any who spread them. Still, they will be remembered, as the last people who actually got close enough to him to have a shot at stopping his ascension-and at least tried. Others would curse them for failing. But all of them will remember.
There's even a minor and unconsequential cult spreading the tales.
Some day, just as he fears, some people might be inspired by them, and try again..."

QuoteGive them a way out?

No, unless they work for it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1018794First, don't have final bosses.

Second, why does the campaign end?  Were they the only people in the world?

The old heroes die, new heroes are born, the world continues.

Yes, this.
Though the failure might have changed it.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018795Well, it won't be over in the sense of play stopping. But the next line of heroes could start literally the next day after the TPK in-game, or it could be ten years later after the bad guy they were fighting has won. That is the sense it would be a "final boss." They already went through like 3 TPKs and new parties, but now the timetable is almost at the end, and if they don't win this time, then the bad guy will have completed his objective. Then the face of the setting will change.

Perfect:D!
See above...

QuoteI suppose you're saying to just let them die then, regardless of whether it would feel like years of time had been wasted. I am actually somewhat in agreement with this, but I have my doubts.

Look at it like this: the new PCs get to start as underdogs, in a very different place:p!
I'd actually like something like this to happen;).

Raise Dead was pretty common. Thus the -1 CON penalty so there would be an end eventually.
Of course, Resurrection was an option at very high level play.

I cap my OD&D at 10th level (11th is extraordinary, magical, etc) so Raise Dead is the go-to if the body can be retrieved. However, in many cases, the corpse isn't intact or repairable and in those cases, there can be great quests by the other PCs to revive their friend, but usually its just a funeral and 3D6 down the line.

Quote from: AsenRG;1018818Look at it like this: the new PCs get to start as underdogs, in a very different place:p!
I'd actually like something like this to happen;).

I've done it a couple times recently - one group TPKs, another group starts off in the post-TPK milieu - but in both cases it was a couple years later IRL with new players as well as new PCs. Both times it made for a stronger campaign IMO; the new players were never in any doubt that failure was an option.

The two cases I recall:

1. Rise of the Runelords AP - PCs were wiped out by Nualia at the end of Book 1 ca level 4, resulting in the destruction of Sandpoint town, the intended home base for the campaign. Years later Sandpoint was a goblin-infested charred ruin. Eventually the Black Dogs mercenary company was hired by Titus Scarnetti, one of the few survivors of Sandpoint, to clear the ruins - this went on mostly in the background of the new campaign though the new PCs did interact with Titus; Quillax the Druidess even delivered his wife's baby and ensured the child was born without the taint of Lamashtu (his wife & daughter had been captured by Nualia's Lamashtu ("mother of monsters") cult but ransomed back, so there was a fear they could have been infected).

2. My Wilderlands - catastrophic PC defeat at 10th level, in the final battle the lead PC Varek Tigerclaw fell in the doomed defence of Bisgen town against the Necromancers of the Black Sun; leading to the rise of the evil Empire of Neo-Nerath. Subsequent PCs spent years battling the Black Sun as it embarked on a genocidal campaign of conquest; at one point the new hero Hakeem Greywolf battled Varek Tigerclaw, now a Death Knight of the Black Sun - and ripped out his black diamond heart. :D

Quote from: S'mon;1018828I've done it a couple times recently - one group TPKs, another group starts off in the post-TPK milieu - but in both cases it was a couple years later IRL with new players as well as new PCs. Both times it made for a stronger campaign IMO; the new players were never in any doubt that failure was an option.

The two cases I recall:

1. Rise of the Runelords AP - PCs were wiped out by Nualia at the end of Book 1 ca level 4, resulting in the destruction of Sandpoint town, the intended home base for the campaign. Years later Sandpoint was a goblin-infested charred ruin. Eventually the Black Dogs mercenary company was hired by Titus Scarnetti, one of the few survivors of Sandpoint, to clear the ruins - this went on mostly in the background of the new campaign though the new PCs did interact with Titus; Quillax the Druidess even delivered his wife's baby and ensured the child was born without the taint of Lamashtu (his wife & daughter had been captured by Nualia's Lamashtu ("mother of monsters") cult but ransomed back, so there was a fear they could have been infected).

2. My Wilderlands - catastrophic PC defeat at 10th level, in the final battle the lead PC Varek Tigerclaw fell in the doomed defence of Bisgen town against the Necromancers of the Black Sun; leading to the rise of the evil Empire of Neo-Nerath. Subsequent PCs spent years battling the Black Sun as it embarked on a genocidal campaign of conquest; at one point the new hero Hakeem Greywolf battled Varek Tigerclaw, now a Death Knight of the Black Sun - and ripped out his black diamond heart. :D

I really have to take time to read the whole blog of yours. Was Varek player controlled for the battle with Hakeem?

Quote from: S'mon;1018828I've done it a couple times recently - one group TPKs, another group starts off in the post-TPK milieu - but in both cases it was a couple years later IRL with new players as well as new PCs. Both times it made for a stronger campaign IMO; the new players were never in any doubt that failure was an option.

The two cases I recall:

1. Rise of the Runelords AP - PCs were wiped out by Nualia at the end of Book 1 ca level 4, resulting in the destruction of Sandpoint town, the intended home base for the campaign. Years later Sandpoint was a goblin-infested charred ruin. Eventually the Black Dogs mercenary company was hired by Titus Scarnetti, one of the few survivors of Sandpoint, to clear the ruins - this went on mostly in the background of the new campaign though the new PCs did interact with Titus; Quillax the Druidess even delivered his wife's baby and ensured the child was born without the taint of Lamashtu (his wife & daughter had been captured by Nualia's Lamashtu ("mother of monsters") cult but ransomed back, so there was a fear they could have been infected).

2. My Wilderlands - catastrophic PC defeat at 10th level, in the final battle the lead PC Varek Tigerclaw fell in the doomed defence of Bisgen town against the Necromancers of the Black Sun; leading to the rise of the evil Empire of Neo-Nerath. Subsequent PCs spent years battling the Black Sun as it embarked on a genocidal campaign of conquest; at one point the new hero Hakeem Greywolf battled Varek Tigerclaw, now a Death Knight of the Black Sun - and ripped out his black diamond heart. :D

What happened with that first group that TPK'd?

Quote from: joriandrake;1018833I really have to take time to read the whole blog of yours. Was Varek player controlled for the battle with Hakeem?

Varek at that stage was a soulless husk of a Death Knight controlled by Borritt Crowfinger, NPC Necromancer & Prince of the Black Sun. So GM-controlled.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018837What happened with that first group that TPK'd?

In "Burnt Offferings" the encounter with Nualia in Thistletop as written is a death trap. There's a narrow 5' tunnel with a pit trap/portcullis, it's perfect for a tough fighter like her to cut through the PCs 1-1. I was using 1e ADnD; the group hit the pit trap/portcullis (one PC* got his foot severed!), then got attacked by the yeth hounds & Nualia while disrupted, and were slaughtered. When I played it myself (in Pathfinder) the GM would have TPK'd us too, if he hadn't fudged massively, letting us flee then come back and redo the encounter (with Nualia still just sitting there, yuck) now with optimised tactics. Second time round my Cleric used 'Command' to force Nualia to come to us out of the kill zone, where we could deal with her.

*An unfortunate Paladin played by Chris, same player who plays Hakeem in my Wilderlands game.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018795I suppose you're saying to just let them die then, regardless of whether it would feel like years of time had been wasted. I am actually somewhat in agreement with this, but I have my doubts.

If the game was fun, the time was not "wasted."  By the logic above, every wargame I've lost has been "time wasted," which is just plain bullshit.

If somebody's dinkie gets a sad because they lose a game, I don't want to play with them in any case.

Quote from: Bren;1018759That would be, in part, because his epic isn't done until the hero dies the final death.

High level characters never end with "And then he got smallpox and expired," so you don't really need to worry about having an unsuitable death, whether by a mighty dragon or a whole army of goblins.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1018898High level characters never end with "And then he got smallpox and expired," so you don't really need to worry about having an unsuitable death, whether by a mighty dragon or a whole army of goblins.

I don't worry about characters in an RPG having an unsuitable death. I play RPGs to find out what happens. So whether a death is heroic, tragic, comedic, anticlimactic, pathetic, or bathetic whatever death the hero ends up with seems like a suitable death to me.

Quote from: Bren;1018922I don't worry about characters in an RPG having an unsuitable death. I play RPGs to find out what happens. So whether a death is heroic, tragic, comedic, anticlimactic, pathetic, or bathetic whatever death the hero ends up with seems like a suitable death to me.

Yep.  We don't know who's Biggs, who's Wedge, who's Porkins, and who's Luke until it's all over.

Quote from: AsenRG;1018818...I'm not sure what's your point, so I'm going to abstain from replying.

I'm not sure either, I've been putting in a lot of overtime and I I'm tired to the point delusion, but I have some downtime in my overtime, so that allows me to make some nonsensical posts.  Just ignore it.

Death for high level D&D characters is often reversible.

Whether a death is "meaningful" or not isn't a criteria I care about.

The only reason I'm running a game is for the laughs, excitement and tension of real people around a real (or virtual) table.  If anyone were to participate and do/feel all of those things, but later think their time was wasted because of a particular thing that happens to a character then they aren't a match for my game.  The game is just the means to bring about the end of a social gathering in meat space.  

So a character death is an acid test to see if everyone's priorities are matched.

Quote from: Madprofessor;1018956I'm not sure either, I've been putting in a lot of overtime and I I'm tired to the point delusion, but I have some downtime in my overtime, so that allows me to make some nonsensical posts.  Just ignore it.

OK, and to avoid overworking yourself:)!

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1018898High level characters never end with "And then he got smallpox and expired," so you don't really need to worry about having an unsuitable death, whether by a mighty dragon or a whole army of goblins.

Well, what is an unsuitable death. Is getting killed by a random encounter unsuitable?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019007Well, what is an unsuitable death. Is getting killed by a random encounter unsuitable?

I rem once in the early '90s Mortis Deathlord, a ca 25th level 1e AD&D PC in service to demon prince Graz'zt, was trekking through the mountains along with two similar level NPCs, on their way to assassinate the enemy King of Trafalgis, a viking realm. I rolled up a random encounter with 4 adult red dragons, who proceeded to wipe out these epic villain characters. :D

It was definitely bathetic - and AIR I did have the PC resurrected some years later to continue service to his dark master. But the old stories have loads of bathetic ends. Jack Vance is inspirational. :D The PC Mortis was ultimately executed by Graz'zt when he (a) started to get cocky, beginning to see himself as Graz'zt's equal, and (b) accidentally violated a non-aggression pact Graz'zt had with Thrin, a lesser god lawful good PC.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1018929Yep.  We don't know who's Biggs, who's Wedge, who's Porkins, and who's Luke until it's all over.

D&D: Where sometimes, the fat guy is the hero.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018117How do you handle the death of such characters? They have the potential to end the campaign or dissolve the party if everyone else was mostly tagging along. It's also a big blow to lose a character after investing so much time in them.

Do you just let them die, and let the campaign die if that's the natural result?

Yes, although in my experience that doesn't happen commonly. The player either makes a new character, promotes a henchman, or finds some other solution that allows them to continue playing. If the campaign "dies", then everyone just makes new characters and we start doing something else. The campaigns don't die, however, as one particular character is not foundational to a campaign. There are no Golden Children. If one character really wants to rescue the nephew of Baron Gilden and gets eaten by a giant frog, it becomes the party's quest. If the party has no interest in the nephew, and would rather hunt gnolls in the Sea of Grass, then it's the nephew who has the problem, not the party or the new character.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019007Well, what is an unsuitable death. Is getting killed by a random encounter unsuitable?

I can't really think of an unsuitable death.

Here's another example, and one that might come up in a session soon: an assassin targets a PC in their sleep. This is appropriate for the context of the situation, but still, this is one of those situations where a PC, if the dice go bad, could die before they even know what happened.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019170Here's another example, and one that might come up in a session soon: an assassin targets a PC in their sleep. This is appropriate for the context of the situation, but still, this is one of those situations where a PC, if the dice go bad, could die before they even know what happened.

If this happens I'll generally do the rolls at-table so players can see what happens. Many D&D versions make it hard to take out a high level PC at table.

I don't make assassins omniscient. I recall one time a Neo-Nerath assassin struck as the ca 10th level PCs were resting at a mage conclave on their way to close the Black Sun gate. With the PC group was an NPC (from The Licheway, I recall) who claimed to be an Archmage, he dressed the part but was really a phony, a 2 hd non-caster. Anyway, when the Black Sun assassin was choosing his target, naturally his top priority was to take out the enemy Archmage... :D ...And the PCs slept peacefully all night.

I generally find player characters with powerful enemies do take precautions, and aside from 3e/Pathfinder I can usually have those precautions be effective, or dice for it (3e/PF is broken IME and often requires handwavium why high level caster NPCs don't use scry-and-die on the PCs). I recall one serious assassination attempt - the PCs were in Ahyf, local hive of scum and villainy, and got into a big fight at the fighting pits liberating some pit fighters. Hakeem was badly wounded killing Gorok Halfogre the pitmaster, giving three Black Sun assassins who had infiltrated the town a chance to strike when he & his friends fled town. It resulted in a brutal night battle on the road but the PCs managed to prevail and took shelter in a farmhouse, fearing more assassins.

If Hakeem or similar high-value PC was foolish enough to put themselves in a position where an assassin could strike as they slept, I would roll with it, using the 5e rules they would take a critical hit in damage, plus poison - likely would kill a Wizard PC or similar squishy, but a high level Barbarian or similar might well survive the wound, wake up and kill their attacker. It would take a lot of CR 8 Assassins to take out Hakeem, 20th level Barbarian with 2 Epic Boons inc Epic Fortitude, CON 24 & 325 hp (takes half damage from weapons while Raging, so effective 650!). My son Bill's Dragonborn Barb-17 Shieldbiter with 209 hp might be more vulnerable, but generally it's the high level casters who really need to worry.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019170Here's another example, and one that might come up in a session soon: an assassin targets a PC in their sleep. This is appropriate for the context of the situation, but still, this is one of those situations where a PC, if the dice go bad, could die before they even know what happened.

Then you play out the assassin:). Now I'll refer to the assassin as "her", because staples of fiction:p.
How good is she at locating the PC? PCs often move.
Then, how good is she at getting in the environment without attracting suspicion, and gathering info? Have her roll a check. If she fails, report "suspicious so and so has been sighted".
Then, have her roll for overcoming each defensive measure separately. If she fails, act appropriately. (Assuming she's really a compatible gender and not lacking in looks, and if such things happen in your game and wouldn't be an OOC warning, she might get around most defences by picking up the PC himself).
Assuming she gets to the sleeping PC with a knife at the ready, proceed as per your rule system with hefty bonuses. (In OD&D, the PC dies. In PF, roll a coup de grace. In GURPS, have her roll against the jugular or similar with a +2 to damage, and so on;)).

The real question here is what is the DM doing wrong that he didn't manage to kill these PCs before they got to such high levels? ;)

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019170Here's another example, and one that might come up in a session soon: an assassin targets a PC in their sleep. This is appropriate for the context of the situation, but still, this is one of those situations where a PC, if the dice go bad, could die before they even know what happened.

Why would dice even be involved? If the assassin manages to get the drop on a sleeping PC, it's goodbye PC and hello 3d6 in order.

Quote from: Dumarest;1019223Why would dice even be involved? If the assassin manages to get the drop on a sleeping PC, it's goodbye PC and hello 3d6 in order.

mAcular Chaotic said "an assassin targets a PC." Presumably one uses dice to figure out if the assassin successfully got the drop on their target.

Quote from: Bren;1019229mAcular Chaotic said "an assassin targets a PC." Presumably one uses dice to figure out if the assassin successfully got the drop on their target.

Eh, would you make a player roll dice to get the drop on a sleeping goblin? As long as it's the same both ways, I guess, but I don't see why you'd need to roll at that point.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019170Here's another example, and one that might come up in a session soon: an assassin targets a PC in their sleep. This is appropriate for the context of the situation, but still, this is one of those situations where a PC, if the dice go bad, could die before they even know what happened.

Excellent.  That'll teach the player not to casually piss off people with the resources to hire assassins.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1018782Actually, a related question: how do you guys feel about long term campaigns ending in a TPK?

This isn't "two sessions in and everybody wipes," but having played for years and made it to a final boss, and then getting destroyed.

Good, bad? Just play it out and let it end on a sad note? Give them a way out?

I play it out. But I also consider if there are ways some of them might live, fairly, rationally, by the rules. If what happens is they all die, they all die. No doubt that would be upsetting to some people, but it's vastly more important to me that the game be a game about the situation it says it is, where the risks, dangers and potential consequences of the game situation are actual risks and dangers with consequences, and the chances of them happening are about what you might expect if the situation were a real one, NOT if the situation were a super hero comic book or a happy-ending Hollywood adventure fillm. It's up to the players and the dice to try to get a positive outcome and avoid being chopped up, eaten, incinerated, etc

And yeah, as Gronan immediately replied, there is no such thing as a "final boss" except in a one-off. I have run one-off adventures with "final bosses" before, but in those it would seem even more glaringly clear to me that I don't want the GM fudging to favor the PCs, because it would completely undermine the whole point of the game - CAN YOU SURVIVE AND PREVAIL IN THIS SITUATION, OR WILL YOU FAIL AND DIE HORRIBLY? If the GM messes with the dice and outcomes to help you, you don't get to find out.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019007Well, what is an unsuitable death. Is getting killed by a random encounter unsuitable?

If it was good enough for Richard the Lionheart and Sir John Chandos, it's good enough for any PC.

There is no such thing as "unsuitable death."  The world is the world, and people die.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019254If it was good enough for Richard the Lionheart and Sir John Chandos, it's good enough for any PC.

There is no such thing as "unsuitable death."  The world is the world, and people die.

Yeah, this:).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019254There is no such thing as "unsuitable death."  The world is the world, and people die.

Depends on the type of campaign. The above works in a gritty dungeon crawl, but not so much for superheroes.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1019266Depends on the type of campaign. The above works in a gritty dungeon crawl, but not so much for superheroes.

Except the thread is about high level characters, and most superhero games don't feature levels;). Besides, the OP was clearly talking about fantasy campaign, so we're answering that.

Quote from: AsenRG;1019282Except the thread is about high level characters, and most superhero games don't feature levels;). Besides, the OP was clearly talking about fantasy campaign, so we're answering that.

It's D&D 5e.

Quote from: AsenRG;1019282Except the thread is about high level characters, and most superhero games don't feature levels;). Besides, the OP was clearly talking about fantasy campaign, so we're answering that.

What I said still applies, though. A fantasy campaign can just as easily be Errol Flynn style tales of daring-do as it can be fantasy Vietnam War. It all depends on what the GM and players want.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019170Here's another example, and one that might come up in a session soon: an assassin targets a PC in their sleep. This is appropriate for the context of the situation, but still, this is one of those situations where a PC, if the dice go bad, could die before they even know what happened.

Yes. And it would play out just as if the PCs were targeting and NPC.

- Can the assassin find the target?
- Are they stealthy enough to approach the target unnoticed?
- Can lethal force be applied? (Weapon, poison, &c.)
- Can they escape after the target is terminated?

And, finally,

- Is the target supposed to be killed, but revivifiable? Killed permanently? Does a thwarted attack send enough of a message, or do we have to gack a henchman on the way out if we miss?

All of that requires impartial thought and die rolls on the part of the referee. And, should the attack be successful, you will know what happened when the divinations are rolled out.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1019266Depends on the type of campaign. The above works in a gritty dungeon crawl, but not so much for superheroes.

Quote from: AsenRG;1019282Except the thread is about high level characters, and most superhero games don't feature levels;). Besides, the OP was clearly talking about fantasy campaign, so we're answering that.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1019332What I said still applies, though. A fantasy campaign can just as easily be Errol Flynn style tales of daring-do as it can be fantasy Vietnam War. It all depends on what the GM and players want.

I don't think the difference is entirely in the subject of the campaign. I almost never play superhero campaigns, but when I do, I stat them out to be super, but then I use consistent and gritty rules to game them out. So it's highly unlikely but still possible that a random gunshot will one-shot Kick Ass, Bat Man, or anyone who isn't entirely bulletproof. And if they ARE bulletproof, it's that stat that makes them unable to be killed by gunfire, and not that they are a PC or a superhero.

Similarly and more on-topic here, there are certainly many people who play fantasy RPGs but routinely fudge things they're afraid will upset their players, removing the risks and consequences and then sometimes noticing the consequences that develop in the game experience, such as the question of this thread, players getting conditioned to the experience of always winning and never really suffering serious lasting consequences even when that gets them into situation where by all rights they should have been slaughtered, and they start being upset by things like taking a few hitpoints of damage, or missing an attack.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019170Here's another example, and one that might come up in a session soon: an assassin targets a PC in their sleep. This is appropriate for the context of the situation, but still, this is one of those situations where a PC, if the dice go bad, could die before they even know what happened.

Good question.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1019601Yes. And it would play out just as if the PCs were targeting and NPC.

- Can the assassin find the target?
- Are they stealthy enough to approach the target unnoticed?
- Can lethal force be applied? (Weapon, poison, &c.)
- Can they escape after the target is terminated?

And, finally,

- Is the target supposed to be killed, but revivifiable? Killed permanently? Does a thwarted attack send enough of a message, or do we have to gack a henchman on the way out if we miss?

All of that requires impartial thought and die rolls on the part of the referee. And, should the attack be successful, you will know what happened when the divinations are rolled out.

Excellent answer. These are the sorts of thing I consider when resolving such situations, too.


And I would add, for all my frequent posts about wanting realistic fair consequences and so on, this sort of assassin question (also see extremely deadly ambushes and some other issues) is one which gave me pause even after 8 or so years of GM-ing and got me to think and realize that this is more the level at which I would choose to apply at least some level of nerfing to avoid slaughtering PCs for a more pleasant game. That is, I will tend to choose to have a powerful enemy of the PCs hire squads of fighters to attack the PCs, even though I know as a GM there are some nasty clever things they could do instead that might tend to be very effective and not give the PCs much chance to do a lot about it, such as a master assassin, and/or coating weapons in deadly poison, and/or poisoning their food, and/or using certain magic spells. But I try to restrict such choices to the level of the types, abilities, and methods of the NPCs, and the weapons, magic, and so on readily available in the world. It's also one reason I tend to like ancient/medieval settings, rather than ones with reliable accurate guns, because shooting people with guns tends to be a really efficient way of killing people and not giving them much chance to escape, which overall tends to seem less fun to me, and I'm not willing to use game mechanics that make things not behave like the thing they supposedly are.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1019332What I said still applies, though. A fantasy campaign can just as easily be Errol Flynn style tales of daring-do as it can be fantasy Vietnam War. It all depends on what the GM and players want.

Sure, it can be, but your comparison was about dungeon crawls vs superheroes. And either way, it doesn't seem to be the deathless kind of campaign:).
And my swashbuckling and wuxia campaigns easily feature PCs losing limbs. While playing "Errol Flynn-style tales of daring-do";).
Also, I'm really not interested in a game where PCs can't die, unless we're playing Nobilis, and even there that's just hard to happen.

Quote from: AsenRG;1019662Sure, it can be, but your comparison was about dungeon crawls vs superheroes. And either way, it doesn't seem to be the deathless kind of campaign:).
And my swashbuckling and wuxia campaigns easily feature PCs losing limbs. While playing "Errol Flynn-style tales of daring-do";).
Also, I'm really not interested in a game where PCs can't die, unless we're playing Nobilis, and even there that's just hard to happen.

My broader point here is that the tone of the campaign as set by the GM and players determines whether or not death at certain junctures is appropriate. Obviously tastes vary, I'm just saying that precisely because tastes vary that there is a such thing as an inappropriate death in some circumstances. It may not suit your preferred style of play, but it still exists.

Quote from: Skarg;1019655Good question.



Excellent answer. These are the sorts of thing I consider when resolving such situations, too.


And I would add, for all my frequent posts about wanting realistic fair consequences and so on, this sort of assassin question (also see extremely deadly ambushes and some other issues) is one which gave me pause even after 8 or so years of GM-ing and got me to think and realize that this is more the level at which I would choose to apply at least some level of nerfing to avoid slaughtering PCs for a more pleasant game. That is, I will tend to choose to have a powerful enemy of the PCs hire squads of fighters to attack the PCs, even though I know as a GM there are some nasty clever things they could do instead that might tend to be very effective and not give the PCs much chance to do a lot about it, such as a master assassin, and/or coating weapons in deadly poison, and/or poisoning their food, and/or using certain magic spells. But I try to restrict such choices to the level of the types, abilities, and methods of the NPCs, and the weapons, magic, and so on readily available in the world. It's also one reason I tend to like ancient/medieval settings, rather than ones with reliable accurate guns, because shooting people with guns tends to be a really efficient way of killing people and not giving them much chance to escape, which overall tends to seem less fun to me, and I'm not willing to use game mechanics that make things not behave like the thing they supposedly are.

I ended up just deciding to go follow through on it. The enemy was an assassin, so it would render them a toothless danger if she couldn't ambush people.

However, I did do all the rolls and so forth.

The actual situation played out both better than I expected and easier on them than I had planned.

Ever heard of Leomund's Tiny Hut? It's a wizard spell that produces a room-shaped force field bubble that lets people you choose on casting enter or leave at their will. Everyone else can't enter. So it's great for casting at night and having the forcefield protect everyone. There's no need to have a watch or worry about random encounters.

This is where it gets beautiful. One of the PCs had been separated from the party. The assassin knows this, and has a Disguise Self spell. She approaches the party disguised as the PC, and I had the player of that PC play this part out, posing as the assassin pretending to be the PC. The rest of the party invites the assassin into the forcefield and to join them so they can all go to sleep.

Cue the assassin waiting for everyone to fall asleep, and beginning the assassination!

However, since they were all basically sleeping together, it meant they could get up and start to fight, heal each other, etc. The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him. So in the end the assassin fled and the party was fine.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019675The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him.

This sounds too generous to me. After the first heal the assassin should have drawn a second dagger and used bonus action for CDG - which I guess is only 2 failed death saves in 5e, so still survivable.

Always send 2 assassins. :D

Quote from: Dumarest;1019232Eh, would you make a player roll dice to get the drop on a sleeping goblin?

Probably. Depends on how much detail was already extant in the situation and how much detail the player gave me outlining how their PC assassin was finding, stalking, setting up, and attacking their target. But as the GM I don't especially want to have to invent lots of detail about exactly how the NPC assassin decides to find, stalk, setup, and attack the PC. For the NPC assassin I'd far prefer to abstract most of the how based on some die rolls.

Quote from: Skarg;1019655And I would add, for all my frequent posts about wanting realistic fair consequences and so on, this sort of assassin question (also see extremely deadly ambushes and some other issues) is one which gave me pause even after 8 or so years of GM-ing and got me to think and realize that this is more the level at which I would choose to apply at least some level of nerfing to avoid slaughtering PCs for a more pleasant game. That is, I will tend to choose to have a powerful enemy of the PCs hire squads of fighters to attack the PCs, even though I know as a GM there are some nasty clever things they could do instead that might tend to be very effective and not give the PCs much chance to do a lot about it, such as a master assassin, and/or coating weapons in deadly poison, and/or poisoning their food, and/or using certain magic spells. But I try to restrict such choices to the level of the types, abilities, and methods of the NPCs, and the weapons, magic, and so on readily available in the world. It's also one reason I tend to like ancient/medieval settings, rather than ones with reliable accurate guns, because shooting people with guns tends to be a really efficient way of killing people and not giving them much chance to escape, which overall tends to seem less fun to me, and I'm not willing to use game mechanics that make things not behave like the thing they supposedly are.

Thanks for sharing this Skarg. I agree with what you said here.

Quote from: Dumarest;1019232Eh, would you make a player roll dice to get the drop on a sleeping goblin? As long as it's the same both ways, I guess, but I don't see why you'd need to roll at that point.

There's always a chance you strike badly.  Maybe not much of a chance, but a chance.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019784There's always a chance you strike badly.  Maybe not much of a chance, but a chance.

Lots of amateur assassins in your games, eh?

No, the gods are bastards and Lady Luck is a fickle whore.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019675... However, since they were all basically sleeping together, it meant they could get up and start to fight, heal each other, etc. The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him. So in the end the assassin fled and the party was fine.

Um, yeah ok though that's also why I don't play campaigns where there is trivial healing and revival and resurrection, particularly not that can be cast over and over in combat. It mostly removes the risk and consequences and actually ups the ante on what effects there are from danger, which ironically can actually end up being more deadly, especially when the players are encouraged to take on more and more dangerous opponents.

I guess the assassin didn't realize they had so much healing magic? Or can she also get resurrected and collect on her contract six times for killing the target six times. ;)

Quote from: Skarg;1019813Um, yeah ok though that's also why I don't play campaigns where there is trivial healing and revival and resurrection, particularly not that can be cast over and over in combat. It mostly removes the risk and consequences and actually ups the ante on what effects there are from danger, which ironically can actually end up being more deadly, especially when the players are encouraged to take on more and more dangerous opponents.

I guess the assassin didn't realize they had so much healing magic? Or can she also get resurrected and collect on her contract six times for killing the target six times. ;)

She didn't know until she saw it, at which point she changed her priority to taking out the healers -- but there was 4 of them out of a party of 7. So she ran.

But next time she'll try to jump them alone.

And yeah, in 5e, as long as you get 1 hit point healed, you immediately pop up with no lasting effects as if you were never downed. So you can keep getting put down and get up like a yoyo, I always thought that was stupid. Perhaps I will houserule that. But they would definitely died otherwise.

I started to play from Warhammer, sometimes I met people with whom I played "party" and remember one ... Their characters never died ... It's too, I remember how they died, but they forgot about it right away :/
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Quote from: Skarg;1019813Um, yeah ok though that's also why I don't play campaigns where there is trivial healing and revival and resurrection, particularly not that can be cast over and over in combat. It mostly removes the risk and consequences and actually ups the ante on what effects there are from danger, which ironically can actually end up being more deadly, especially when the players are encouraged to take on more and more dangerous opponents.

I guess the assassin didn't realize they had so much healing magic? Or can she also get resurrected and collect on her contract six times for killing the target six times. ;)

Heh.  Getting dropped to 0, then bouncing back up with full functionality the second you get any healing is one of the silliest aspects of 5e.  Turns the game into a total farce.  Doing the Lost Mine of Phandelver, had a PC bounce up twice and on the second recovery from healing just said "This is fucking retarded, shouldn't I at least need a Short Rest or something?"

Easy to fix, but still silly.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019814She didn't know until she saw it, at which point she changed her priority to taking out the healers -- but there was 4 of them out of a party of 7. So she ran.

But next time she'll try to jump them alone.

And yeah, in 5e, as long as you get 1 hit point healed, you immediately pop up with no lasting effects as if you were never downed. So you can keep getting put down and get up like a yoyo, I always thought that was stupid. Perhaps I will houserule that. But they would definitely died otherwise.

6 times seems incredible. Assuming she had tried and failed to take out felled PC with a massive damage CDG*, I'd have had her flee after the second or at most third time it happened. I'm also amazed they couldn't kill her in 6+ combat rounds.

*Eg if PC was healed up to single digit hp she could maybe take him/her down with one d6+3 & poison 7d6/DC 15 save for half shortsword blow; then use poisoned dagger Sneak Attack auto-critical CDG with (edit) second attack, doubling all damage dice for (using MM assassin): 2d6+3 (sword) + 8d6 (sneak attack) plus DC 15 CON save for 7d6 poison, halved on a save, with insta death if total equals PC max hp. (edit) Or I could be really mean & say the assassin gets 2 attacks normally & can use an off-hand bonus attack too, allowing 2 auto crits = 4 failed death saves = dead.

Certainly the PCs IMC learned to greatly fear the MM-statted CR 8 Black Sun Assassins, and certainly never let themselves get into a position like the PCs in your game.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019814So you can keep getting put down and get up like a yoyo, I always thought that was stupid. Perhaps I will houserule that.

For my online 5e game I went with negative hit points, and no "heal from 0", so a PC at -14 needs 15 healing to get to 1 hp.

Running Stonehell tabletop with low level PCs though, I'm finding that the default rules work well with the mixed-level (1-4: 3 1st, 1 3rd, 2 4th) PC group; without easy healing there'd be a pile of dead PCs in most encounters. And the final battle Sunday was very dramatic when half the PCs went down in round 1 to the Orc charge, including the 4th level Bard Trystan who was their only source of spell healing! Things looked grim and I was thinking "uh oh, TPK!" - but then the Fighter-3 elf warrior maid Hatala swooped in, Action Surged & shot an orc off Trystan with her X-bow while also administering a healing potion to him in the same round. Then the lightning trap in the room went off again, searing two of the orcs, Trystan used his healing word to bring up another PC, and the party were able to turn the fight around.

(Mind you, I love it that I nearly TPK'd a 6-PC level 1-4 party with 6 orcs!) :D

Meh. Hit Points are "silly" (and also an extremely useful abstraction). If 5e didn't have the confluence of healing options all over the place, the bounce-back-up rule, the no-overflow-unless-it's-2*maxHp rule, and clerics having routine access to a bonus-action healing spell, I doubt we'd all focus on the 'dropped to 0, then bouncing back up' part.

I rabidly dislike it from a verisimilitude point-of-view in that it encourages very foolish IRL behavior (continuing to whack at a downed opponents while there are people actively trying to kill you still on the field of battle). And I think it leads to fewer single-PC deaths, and thus greater chances of TPKs (because you take on greater challenges, and tempt fate for a truly catastrophic SNAFU).

My take-away from mAcular Chaotic's situation is 'why couldn't the assassin do 2*max hp, suffice that the PC was auto-killed?' And that I think is a place where 5e breaks down at higher levels, and/or the DM needs to put in a house-rule about if you're sleeping and the assailant can just slit your throat/decapitate you, then you die no need to deal with hp (cue link to that passage from Gronan's book notes about not needing rules for coup de grace).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1019835And that I think is a place where 5e breaks down at higher levels, and/or the DM needs to put in a house-rule about if you're sleeping and the assailant can just slit your throat/decapitate you, then you die no need to deal with hp (cue link to that passage from Gronan's book notes about not needing rules for coup de grace).

I don't think it's at all easy IRL to break into someone's house while they're sleeping and slit their throat without them waking up. I'm a light sleeper and unless I've had a lot to drink I often wake up from sounds in the night. Short of a high level assassin creeping in, I'd definitely wake from a home invader coming in through my door or window! I definitely think rolls are appropriate unless the victim is truly helpless - either literally unconscious (not just sleeping) or else bound & trussed. Inebriated victim should make it easier but still not auto-kill.

Quote from: S'mon;1019837I don't think it's at all easy IRL to break into someone's house while they're sleeping and slit their throat without them waking up.

Oh, no. I didn't mean that stealth rolls and the such would not be required. I just mean that you shouldn't need to roll for damage. If they don't wake up, and you're in a position to slit their throat, HP shouldn't really be involved.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1019816Heh.  Getting dropped to 0, then bouncing back up with full functionality the second you get any healing is one of the silliest aspects of 5e.  Turns the game into a total farce.  Doing the Lost Mine of Phandelver, had a PC bounce up twice and on the second recovery from healing just said "This is fucking retarded, shouldn't I at least need a Short Rest or something?"

Easy to fix, but still silly.

Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019902Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Same in 5e

Quote from: S'mon;10198246 times seems incredible. Assuming she had tried and failed to take out felled PC with a massive damage CDG*, I'd have had her flee after the second or at most third time it happened. I'm also amazed they couldn't kill her in 6+ combat rounds.

*Eg if PC was healed up to single digit hp she could maybe take him/her down with one d6+3 & poison 7d6/DC 15 save for half shortsword blow; then use poisoned dagger Sneak Attack auto-critical CDG with (edit) second attack, doubling all damage dice for (using MM assassin): 2d6+3 (sword) + 8d6 (sneak attack) plus DC 15 CON save for 7d6 poison, halved on a save, with insta death if total equals PC max hp. (edit) Or I could be really mean & say the assassin gets 2 attacks normally & can use an off-hand bonus attack too, allowing 2 auto crits = 4 failed death saves = dead.

Certainly the PCs IMC learned to greatly fear the MM-statted CR 8 Black Sun Assassins, and certainly never let themselves get into a position like the PCs in your game.

The PC had around 45 hit points, and the assassin would do an average of 35 damage with each attack.

She wasn't able to coup de grace him since in 5e you have to put them at the negative max hit points (-45) in one attack. So what would happen is:

1) She takes down the PC with her first attack, out of two.
2) She has one attack left. She could use it on the PC to give him 2 death saving throws, or attack someone else and try to poison them.
3) Since attacking the downed PC a second time wouldn't kill him, and the next PC to go would immediately heal him, that attack would be wasted.
4) Therefore, she would attack another PC, and try to take out the healers, so she could finally finish them off.
5) But there were 4 healers, so it was too much.

The party didn't instantly kill her over the turns because she had cast Darkness. She could see through it, but they could not. So their attacks were mostly crippled, but she didn't have enough firepower to take them out immediately. She started wearing them down, but eventually had to escape.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019902Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Quote from: S'mon;1019903Same in 5e

Well like Willy mentioned it's multiple factors.  They combine to make a Perfect Storm of Silliness.

Let's say you have 21 HPs.
You can be at 2 HPS, get hit for 20.  You go to 0, not -18.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  Then you get hit for 20 again.  You go to 0.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  

You'd have to be hit so you went to more than -21 in a single hit to worry about an instant kill.

This could literally happen a dozen times in a fight.  In fact you have people arguing that Clerics shouldn't even bother trying to heal people until they go down, because all that over-damage is healing you don't have to do.

It would make for some funny Penny Arcade or GitP comics, but that's about it.

A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019923She wasn't able to coup de grace him since in 5e you have to put them at the negative max hit points (-45) in one attack.

Hmm. Either the poison damage counts as part of the CDG/crit attack, in which case you can easily get damage to 45 in one attack if you sneak attack while target at 0, or else it's an additional damage source thus causing an additional failed death save - in which case you get to 3 death saves. Either way, PC dead. :D

Quote from: CRKrueger;1019925Let's say you have 21 HPs.
You can be at 2 HPS, get hit for 20.  You go to 0, not -18.

Just counting negative hit points is more straightforward. What's the rationale or design intent for setting the HPs at 0 instead of at -18?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019928A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

I went with level of exhaustion at zero hit points for some time.  When I started using exhaustion more fully, that was too much.  So I changed it to level of exhaustion every death save, and finally every failed death save (and otherwise quit tracking death saves past the immediate conflict).  That works fine for me.  

Remember, if your goal is to minimize Jack in the Box characters, it is not necessary to have a rule where they can't bounce back up with magical healing.  It is sufficient to have a rule such that the players really do not want to hit zero if they can help it.  Thus the healers in the group will try to anticipate things, and keep characters from going down in the first place.  That doesn't help at 1st and 2nd levels very much, but then you don't spend a lot of time there.  If your goal is to never have Jack in the Box, then you might as well cut to the chase and require a short rest to get back up, or something similar.

Quote from: Bren;1019934Just counting negative hit points is more straightforward. What's the rationale or design intent for setting the HPs at 0 instead of at -18?

1. Handling time, especially for monsters.  My guess is that the improvement is so negligible as to be worthless for most players, but I have 4 players across two large groups where it makes a noticeable difference.  Though now that I'm getting them to avoid it, even that advantage has evaporated.

2. I think it simplifies the surrounding rules somewhat.  If you can't go negative, you don't need special cases to handle different states of negative.  Plus, the negative points are rather pointless with Death Saves.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019928A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

If you're houseruling, why not "a special type of exhaustion which can be remedied by a short rest?" That way, you get accumulating penalties in-combat, it can create another avenue to death (getting enough exhaustion levels), and it takes a serious investment to heal up multiple layers of it (multiple short rests is easier to do than multiple long rests, but still a commitment). That might disincentivize healing at the last minute.

Quote from: Bren;1019934Just counting negative hit points is more straightforward. What's the rationale or design intent for setting the HPs at 0 instead of at -18?

Simplicity. Always simplicity. Much like Dis/Advantage, it creates bizarre situations in the purported goal of simplicity.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1019902Well, at least in OD&D, it was magic healing; spells and potions.  So, you know, magic.

Quote from: S'mon;1019903Same in 5e

Sounds like it's very different in terms of availability, though, no? Doesn't 5e give something like a Lay On Hands healing ability to every level 3 or so cleric, which can be used every combat round?

I thought 0D&D tended to give out spells at random rather than player selection, and (oh heck I'll look it up in my 0D&D book I happen to have here!) only let them be cast once per adventure or per day, and let's see, we've got a 1/6 chance of learning Cure Light Wounds at level 1 for 1d+1 healing, but no revival. Then 1/6 chance of learning Cure Serious Wounds (2d+2) at level 4, and then 1/6 chance of learning Raise Dead at level 5, which raises Men, Elves or Dwarves (others are out of luck, bwahaha Halflings and half-orcs), and a nice two weeks of rest required after being raised.

Two weeks of being alive but bed-ridden, not "yohoho I have 1 HP and attack at full effectiveness immediately". Not "our party has a healer so no threat that only takes one of us to minimum hitpoints per turn can ever kill any of us because we lay hands on your victim every turn" (well, maybe 2 such healers, if the threat can target a healer, but that seems not to be much problem - in the example there were 4 such healers!).

Quote from: CRKrueger;1019925Well like Willy mentioned it's multiple factors.  They combine to make a Perfect Storm of Silliness.

Let's say you have 21 HPs.
You can be at 2 HPS, get hit for 20.  You go to 0, not -18.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  Then you get hit for 20 again.  You go to 0.  A 1hp healing and you're at 1hp again and bounce up with full effectiveness.  

You'd have to be hit so you went to more than -21 in a single hit to worry about an instant kill.

This could literally happen a dozen times in a fight.  In fact you have people arguing that Clerics shouldn't even bother trying to heal people until they go down, because all that over-damage is healing you don't have to do.

It would make for some funny Penny Arcade or GitP comics, but that's about it.

Yes, and if I understand correctly, the 20-damage monster will never kill anyone who has a healer heal 1 HP each turn, but an extra 1-HP hit would cause a death check.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019928A good houserule there would be that you get a rank of exhaustion for each time you go down.

I'm just hesitant to apply that one since it would make things much more lethal -- as you can see here, for these PCs.

That or slow the pace of the game down to a 5 minute adventuring day. "Oh I got downed once, time to Long Rest to get rid of this rank of Exhaustion."

It seems to me that the generous healing is what leads to that mindset, because it's so generous. Getting "downed" instead of killed, and being able to heal any amount of damage in one day, lead to that making sense. Being able to heal so easily, and to avoid risk of death in combat, also leads to more lethal situations, because there is no challenge and it's not interesting to anyone with any stomach for actual risk unless there is some possibility of negative results. That leads to both the players and the GM escalating in search of something with some level of interesting risk, even if they are afraid/averse of any PC actually dying.

You can see yourself escalating in your example here: An assassin couldn't cause any lasting effect at all, so now they're going to try to hit a PC alone, which is liable to kill them off. If they are at all cautious and thoughtful, they'll tend to always stay together, escalating the situation to where something has to be able to take out all of their healers to be a threat. If there were the possibility of a PC being injured in any meaningful way, that would not require that much escalation to make things interesting. And as Willie the Duck rightly pointed out:

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1019835... I rabidly dislike it from a verisimilitude point-of-view in that it encourages very foolish IRL behavior (continuing to whack at a downed opponents while there are people actively trying to kill you still on the field of battle). And I think it leads to fewer single-PC deaths, and thus greater chances of TPKs (because you take on greater challenges, and tempt fate for a truly catastrophic SNAFU). ...

Notice that the generous death/healing/revival situation leads to MORE deadly play, by making it stupid not to finish off downed opponents who have a healer, and because both the players and the GM will tend to look for something which is an actual challenge even with all the healing, and the only available outcomes are "no effect on the party because all wounds get healed up easily within one 'long rest' at most" or TPK (or maybe "someone lived but all the healers died").

Consider how many miles you are away from the healing rule in 0D&D:
"On the first day of complete rest no hit points will be regained, but every other day thereafter one hit point will be regained until the character is completely healed. This can take a long time."

Don't know how it is in later editions, but Skarg is right that in OD&D Cure Light Wound is a clerical spell that is treated like all other spells.  And a first level cleric doesn't even get a spell.

I usually play it that clerics get all spells available rather than random ones like magic-users, it makes the cleric's life a bit easier and helps the whole party.  But as Skarg pointed out, things look WAY different when your cleric says "I can cure 2-7 points of damage, ONCE."

Quote from: Skarg;1020099Sounds like it's very different in terms of availability, though, no? Doesn't 5e give something like a Lay On Hands healing ability to every level 3 or so cleric, which can be used every combat round?

Not that I'm aware of - never seen anything like that in my games, even with a 13th-16th level Cleric in one.

A 5e Cleric-1 just gets 2 spell slots that can be used for curing, either cure wounds or healing word. This is less than a typical 1e AD&D Cleric gets - 3 with 2 bonus slots for WIS.

Checking the 5e SRD at http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/SRD-OGL_V1.1.pdf I see the Life Domain Cleric can swap out turning undead once per short rest for healing 5 hp/level; once per short rest. A short rest is 1 hour.

Personally, IMC I use the one week long rest option from the 5e DMG, this means a Clr-1 IMC gets 2 cure spells per week. By default a LR is overnight so they get 2 cures per day, better than OD&D-Classic but less than 1e AD&D.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1019668My broader point here is that the tone of the campaign as set by the GM and players determines whether or not death at certain junctures is appropriate.

Of course. So?

QuoteObviously tastes vary, I'm just saying that precisely because tastes vary that there is a such thing as an inappropriate death in some circumstances. It may not suit your preferred style of play, but it still exists.

And my point is that my tastes run towards the "no inappropriate death".

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1019675I ended up just deciding to go follow through on it. The enemy was an assassin, so it would render them a toothless danger if she couldn't ambush people.

However, I did do all the rolls and so forth.

The actual situation played out both better than I expected and easier on them than I had planned.

Ever heard of Leomund's Tiny Hut? It's a wizard spell that produces a room-shaped force field bubble that lets people you choose on casting enter or leave at their will. Everyone else can't enter. So it's great for casting at night and having the forcefield protect everyone. There's no need to have a watch or worry about random encounters.

This is where it gets beautiful. One of the PCs had been separated from the party. The assassin knows this, and has a Disguise Self spell. She approaches the party disguised as the PC, and I had the player of that PC play this part out, posing as the assassin pretending to be the PC. The rest of the party invites the assassin into the forcefield and to join them so they can all go to sleep.

Cue the assassin waiting for everyone to fall asleep, and beginning the assassination!

However, since they were all basically sleeping together, it meant they could get up and start to fight, heal each other, etc. The assassin put her target to 0 hit points six different times, but each time the other party members immediately healed him. So in the end the assassin fled and the party was fine.

You did it well. The system delivered a totally unexpected result, which might be a feature, or a bug.

Quote from: AsenRG;1020124And my point is that my tastes run towards the "no inappropriate death".
 

The original statement made by Gronan was "There is no such thing as "unsuitable death"" , with no qualifications. I was disputing that.

Quote from: Skarg;1020099Consider how many miles you are away from the healing rule in 0D&D:
"On the first day of complete rest no hit points will be regained, but every other day thereafter one hit point will be regained until the character is completely healed. This can take a long time."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020110Don't know how it is in later editions, but Skarg is right that in OD&D Cure Light Wound is a clerical spell that is treated like all other spells.  And a first level cleric doesn't even get a spell.
I usually play it that clerics get all spells available rather than random ones like magic-users, it makes the cleric's life a bit easier and helps the whole party.  But as Skarg pointed out, things look WAY different when your cleric says "I can cure 2-7 points of damage, ONCE."

Well, to be fair, you are miles away from OD&D--as in, these are very very different games with very different playstyles, assumptions, etc. I don't particularly like the confluence of rules and abilities (and what they incentivize) that 5e ended up with, but I'm also not going to fault it for not being OD&D.

OD&D (and the rest of TSR D&D, which never adapted this, even though virtually everything else changed), had its' own perverse incentives and outcomes. For instance:

• first and foremost, of course, is that the party needs a cleric (and the cleric must survive at all costs, even though they are also some kind of front line warrior-mage)
• second, favoring damage avoidance mechanism (such as boosting AC, hiding behind an ally, mirror image/blur/etc.) over increasing one's hit points as a measure of battle resilience, despite the fact that that is what HP were intended to be.
• low-level, less experienced characters can naturally heal (in percentage of total) more quickly than high level characters
• characters relying on natural healing should just wait days and days to heal, making it just an extended 15-minute workday just the same as later editions (or conversely, it pushes the DM to make days and days of wandering monster rolls, either way becoming a bookkeeping exercise in search of a reason other than a false conceit to 'realistic natural healing.'

3e moved to naturally healing 1hp per level or hd, which had the perverse incentive of making wizards better able to naturally heal (in percentage of total) more quickly than barbarians.

I'm saying this to point out that the healing back to full overnight part at least was chasing good ends, and was a response to genuine dissatisfaction--most notably that clerics were still mandatory despite there now being 11 classes (and 3e's attempt to incentivize players to want to play clerics/druids had gone haywire), and that natural healing was usually just an extended bookkeeping exercise. The designers' hearts were in the right place, it is simply the implementation that failed.

My method of addressing this is to rule that healing at 0hp can stabilize an ally, but they are still out of the fight. Thus no incentive to finish them off. HP heal fully not after a long rest but after a full 24 hours of uninterrupted rest (Long Rest only restores the standard 1/2 * level HD to spend on short-rest healing). And for the assassin-- again, you do not need a rule set to tell you that an assassin who sneaks up on a sleeping person can slit their throat (which bypasses the hp mechanic, although I would rule that near-immediate magic healing could save them).

Quote from: S'mon;1020122Not that I'm aware of - never seen anything like that in my games, even with a 13th-16th level Cleric in one.

A 5e Cleric-1 just gets 2 spell slots that can be used for curing, either cure wounds or healing word. This is less than a typical 1e AD&D Cleric gets - 3 with 2 bonus slots for WIS.

Checking the 5e SRD at http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/SRD-OGL_V1.1.pdf I see the Life Domain Cleric can swap out turning undead once per short rest for healing 5 hp/level; once per short rest. A short rest is 1 hour.

Personally, IMC I use the one week long rest option from the 5e DMG, this means a Clr-1 IMC gets 2 cure spells per week. By default a LR is overnight so they get 2 cures per day, better than OD&D-Classic but less than 1e AD&D.

According to mAcular Chaotic's example that we're talking about, his PCs have four healers who managed to bring the victim up from 0 HP six times in the fight, so the assassin realized they could heal him as fast as she could hurt him, so she had to flee. I've seen quite a few threads where it's mentioned as a feature/issue in 5e that PCs tend to get knocked to 0 HP and healed each turn.

But that and other things that sound not to my taste have generally kept my interest in reading 5e low. But let's take a quick Google peek. Hmm, ok, there's this Paladin class feature:

QuoteLay on Hands
Your blessed touch can heal wounds. You have a pool of Healing power that replenishes when you take a Long Rest. With that pool, you can restore a total number of hit points equal to your paladin level x 5.

As an action, you can touch a creature and draw power from the pool to restore a number of hit points to that creature, up to the maximum amount remaining in your pool.

Alternatively, you can expend 5 hit points from your pool of Healing to cure the target of one disease or neutralize one poison affecting it. You can cure multiple Diseases and neutralize multiple Poisons with a single use of Lay on Hands, expending hit points separately for each one.

This feature has no effect on Undead and constructs.

I don't know the rest of the rules, so I could be missing something, but that reads to me like you could raise someone from 0 HP to 1 HP a number of times equal to 5 times your Paladin level. I assume paladins are also strong fighter types, so you don't even have to have a dedicated healer PC to get that.

Let's check Clerics... oh, "sweet":

QuoteChannel Divinity: Preserve Life
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to heal the badly injured.

As an action, you present your holy Symbol and evoke Healing energy that can restore a number of hit points equal to five times your cleric level.

Choose any creatures within 30 feet of you, and divide those hit points among them. This feature can restore a creature to no more than half of its hit point maximum. You can't use this feature on an Undead or a construct.

Am I right that these class "features" can be spammed every turn as needed? This one doesn't even seem to have a limited pool that wears out. And it looks like it lets you heal anyone within 30 feet, meaning you could be 15 feet behind the front lines to avoid getting taken out yourself, while basically healing any PCs who were at 0 HP back to 1 HP every turn forever. Am I wrong?

And even if a PC actually dies, there's a 3rd level Cleric spell called Revivify which would also repair a dead PC to 1 HP.

First off thanks to Steven and Willie for answering. I appreciate how tedious it can be explaining rules to the ignorant, which I mostly am in the case of 5E and I appreciate you guys patiently making the effort. :)

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;10199401. Handling time, especially for monsters.

How so? Don't monsters with negative hits usually just end up as completely dead, so any handling after they go below zero would be minimal at most?

Quote2. I think it simplifies the surrounding rules somewhat.  If you can't go negative, you don't need special cases to handle different states of negative.  Plus, the negative points are rather pointless with Death Saves.

My ignorance of the 5E rules makes me not understand what you mean by different states of negative.

While I sort of get your point about Death Saves making negative points kind of superfluous, wouldn't tracking make Death Saves rather pointless, so then we are left with a choice of which flavor does one prefer tracking both positive and negative hits or tracking positive hits, negative hits but only when over a threshold, and tracking and making Death Saves?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1019979Simplicity. Always simplicity. Much like Dis/Advantage, it creates bizarre situations in the purported goal of simplicity.

Maybe it's the mathematician in me talking but tracking negative hit points is at most only minimally more complex than tracking any sort of hit points in the first place. And to my mind avoiding the bizarre situation of the jack-in-the-box characters is certainly worth some minimal additional complexity.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1020130Well, to be fair, you are miles away from OD&D--as in, these are very very different games with very different playstyles, assumptions, etc. I don't particularly like the confluence of rules and abilities (and what they incentivize) that 5e ended up with, but I'm also not going to fault it for not being OD&D.
...

Sure,  I agree with and/or appreciate much of what you posted.

But that's not what I was trying to express. I didn't mean to hold up 0D&D as a gold standard (though many like it well enough, or do still prefer it). Rather I was remarking at how extreme the distance the healing situation is between 0D&D and 5e, because I thought it was interesting and also to suggest that mAcular Chaotic reflect on the proportions of that chasm when being concerned with house-ruling something so much smaller, such as his idea of a fatigue level effect for getting wiped out and raised.

Quote from: Skarg;1020099I thought 0D&D tended to give out spells at random rather than player selection...

Not originally. That was introduced in the Greyhawk supplement along with a lot of new spells for both MUs and Clerics. And I think it only applied to MUs, not to Clerics.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1020130I don't particularly like the confluence of rules and abilities (and what they incentivize) that 5e ended up with, but I'm also not going to fault it for not being OD&D.

Fair point.

Quote[1] first and foremost, of course, is that the party needs a cleric (and the cleric must survive at all costs, even though they are also some kind of front line warrior-mage)

That is not my experience of OD&D. My PC's seldom had a cleric in the party and the parties I ran as a DM had a cleric less than half of the time.

Quote[2]  second, favoring damage avoidance mechanism (such as boosting AC, hiding behind an ally, mirror image/blur/etc.) over increasing one's hit points as a measure of battle resilience, despite the fact that that is what HP were intended to be.

Some truth to this, but better AC via better armor is part of what distinguished the fighters and to an extent the auxiliary fighters like clerics from the non-armor wearing MUs. To my mind, better armor making one more durable is a properly aligned incentive. I think the AC quest outside of better armor became more generally true with the addition of DEX bonuses to AC and more magic items, like Bracers of Protection, that boosted AC.

Quote[3] low-level, less experienced characters can naturally heal (in percentage of total) more quickly than high level characters

I agree with you here. This is counter to the game's explanations of what hit points actually represent. I assume part of the reason for it was (a) the simplicity of addition over using ratios, division, and multiplication and (b) a conscious decision to make hit points an expendable resource that needed to be managed.

Quote3e moved to naturally healing 1hp per level or hd, which had the perverse incentive of making wizards better able to naturally heal (in percentage of total) more quickly than barbarians.

I wonder if a better (though still simple) solution might have been to have MUs heal 1 pt/day regardless of level; Clerics and Thieves to heal 1 pt/2 or 3 levels; and Fighters to heal 1 pt/level.

QuoteMy method of addressing this is to rule that healing at 0hp can stabilize an ally, but they are still out of the fight.

Seems reasonable.

Lay on Hands is even better than that.

You get a pool of hit points to spread around. You can use any chunk of it that you want. So if you have 20 hit points of healing, you can blow all 20 hit points in one blow to heal someone, or just give them 1 hit point 20 separate times.

And we had three Paladins, and a Cleric. Actually, the Druid and Bard in the party had healing spells too.

Quote from: Skarg;1020135According to mAcular Chaotic's example that we're talking about, his PCs have four healers who managed to bring the victim up from 0 HP six times in the fight...

I think 4 healers (edit: or the 6 they actully had!) :eek: is very unusual. Normally a group of 4-6 PCs has 1-2 healers, and things get dicey when the healer goes down, as happened IMC on Sunday when the Bard Trystan went down to the orc attack in round 1. If the elven Fighter Hatala had not bought a healing potion at the start of the session, and used it at exactly the right moment (with an Action Surge) to get Trystan back to positive hp, I'm sure it would have been a TPK.

IMO it was a nice dramatic moment. IME 5e healing is one of the many things about 5e that seem to work a lot better in practice than in theory - the XP chart is another.

Quote from: Skarg;1020135Am I right that these class "features" can be spammed every turn as needed?

You are wrong - I posted about this specific ability just an hour ago upthread! It recharges on a short rest, ie 1 hour.

A Paladin could technically use his Action to Lay On Hands repeatedly for 1 hp squirts, yup. That's mostly a bad use of a Paladin, but it is worth him holding back a few LoH hp in case someone goes down.

I've never seen the 'repeatedly popping back up' thing IMCs - IMC after it happens once or twice, the enemy are careful to finish off the fallen, which for multi-attack foes (most foes from level 5 up) is usually pretty easy to do. 2 melee hits on a 0 hp target is an auto-kill. I don't find this particularly implausible either; a final stab to a dying foe 'just to make sure' is so common IRL it's practically SOP.

Quote from: Bren;1020137Maybe it's the mathematician in me talking but tracking negative hit points is at most only minimally more complex than tracking any sort of hit points in the first place. And to my mind avoiding the bizarre situation of the jack-in-the-box characters is certainly worth some minimal additional complexity.

Perhaps. It is just my opinion as to why, but it fits. Two blind swordsmen swinging at each other do so with the same chance to hit as two sighted opponents (since each others' advantage and disadvantages cancel each other out), and that is also a bizarre situation one might say is worth additional complexity.

Beyond that

• The game is not designed for mathematicians, it is designed for mathematicians to play with their less mathematically inclined friends and everyone's children.
• Negative hp was itself a jerryrigged rule that helped create some space between fully functional at 1 hp and dead, not some well designed thing that must be kept in perpetuity because it worked so well (in particular, in later editions where damage was no longer usually 1d6, -10hp in one edition wasn't the same as -10 hp in another).
• The jack-in-the-box effect is the result of multiple factors coming together, not simply the no-overflow/end-of-negative-hp change in the rules.
• 3e had the negative-hp-drowning-heal accidental rule confluence, to which WotC heard years of people using it as evidence that they didn't know how to write a game (despite it being virtually impossible to abuse).
• Very complex games from 4e to GURPS (with all the rules turned on) to HERO System to Aftermath to whatever... are not doing all that well in the marketplace compared to 5e, OSR games, and the like (Pathfinder being a notable exception).

Again, not making any moral or 'should' statements. Only that I can see lots of reasons why WotC might have chosen this direction for this edition.

Quote from: Skarg;1020138Rather I was remarking at how extreme the distance the healing situation is between 0D&D and 5e,

Yes, but IME the difference between 5e and 1e isn't very big at all.

Quote from: S'mon;1020145You are wrong - I posted about this specific ability just an hour ago upthread! It recharges on a short rest, ie 1 hour.

A Paladin could technically use his Action to Lay On Hands repeatedly for 1 hp squirts, yup. That's mostly a bad use of a Paladin, but it is worth him holding back a few LoH hp in case someone goes down.

I've never seen the 'repeatedly popping back up' thing IMCs - IMC after it happens once or twice, the enemy are careful to finish off the fallen, which for multi-attack foes (most foes from level 5 up) is usually pretty easy to do. 2 melee hits on a 0 hp target is an auto-kill. I don't find this particularly implausible either; a final stab to a dying foe 'just to make sure' is so common IRL it's practically SOP.

My logic was that the assassin realized they would get overcome by the remaining enemies if they used their attacks to finish off the one PC. Her blows had the chance to knock someone unconscious because of poison, so it was worth throwing attacks at the remaining guys to just thin the herd a bit and take the pressure off of a 6 on 1 fight.

I wouldn't say the PCs full function is healing, but everyone has a little healing at least.

It's funny, whenever I've even tried the final stab, someone always complains that it's unrealistic even though they do the same thing. Tough cookies.

A short rest to get back up again could be a good idea, but... I can also see it leading to cases where the party decides they can't risk waiting, and plow on ahead, leading to that PC just being a spectator the entire night. So the exhaustion is probably better since it lets them keep playing but not make it painless.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1020148It's funny, whenever I've even tried the final stab, someone always complains that it's unrealistic...

Yeah. They would say that, wouldn't they. :D Players will try all kinds of tricks/whines/begging to try to stop PC death, especially perma-death.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1020146Beyond that
[1] The game is not designed for mathematicians, it is designed for mathematicians to play with their less mathematically inclined friends and everyone's children.

Sadly true. It makes me nostalgic for DC Heroes and it's math friendly AP system.

Quote

• Negative hp was itself a jerryrigged rule that helped create some space between fully functional at 1 hp and dead, not some well designed thing that must be kept in perpetuity because it worked so well (in particular, in later editions where damage was no longer usually 1d6, -10hp in one edition wasn't the same as -10 hp in another).

Fair point. I come at this from having played a lot of Runequest where negative hit points are a thing that gets tracked so using negative hit points seems like a natural thing to do.

Quote[3] The jack-in-the-box effect is the result of multiple factors coming together, not simply the no-overflow/end-of-negative-hp change in the rules.

I get that. But the effect seems easily foreseeable and something that 5E should have been designed to avoid.

Quote[4] Very complex games from 4e to GURPS (with all the rules turned on) to HERO System to Aftermath to whatever... are not doing all that well in the marketplace compared to 5e, OSR games, and the like (Pathfinder being a notable exception).

I don't know that complexity is the major reason those games aren't doing better in the market place. D&D 3E/4E and Pathfinder seem like pretty complex games to me and that set of games seemed to do better than GURPS or HERO. While being simpler than some RPGs probably doesn't hurt, a lot of the success of 5E is just that it is the new iteration of D&D -- the first mover, market leader, and generic face of table top RPG games. Being perhaps a bit simpler than 3E/4E/Pathfinder

Maybe it is intentionally designed this way? The DMG provides "massive damage" options to make things more lethal at least.

Consider the negative hit point thing from the perspective of the writers, charged with designing a system that will at least be reasonably palatable to fans of all editions as a 2nd choice.  And the system is going to be modular at key points to accommodate that design:

1. Originally, in D&D it was hit zero, die, correct?  Then very rapidly optional rules were added for people that didn't like that, including various versions of negative hit points.
2. Negative hit points can be made to work for particular groups, but they have oddball side effects such as those Willie discussed above.  The fixes for those side effects can become complicated for some groups aiming at a particular style of healing.  
3. Death saves were introduced in 4E (or perhaps late in 3E, but I wouldn't know about them there).  Fans of that mechanic must also have an option that minimally satisfies them. Plus, whatever their issues, death saves have some positive attributes. Same way with the short and long rests, which whatever else they are, are an excellent means for providing modular boundaries for options without undue complexity.
4. At some point, they hit upon the idea of the exhaustion mechanic as a way to manage things that had a longer-term effect, and operated somewhat independently of hit points.  This is also modular, and goes part of the way towards solving the so called "Save or Die" problem, without automatically making the threats toothless.
5. To support "bounded accuracy", hit points and damage amounts scale faster.  This means that new side effects would be introduced by trying to have negative hit points.

With all of that together, there just doesn't need to be negative hit points.  Everything that negative hit points tried to do before, is now done by one or more of the above elements, and often with more clarity and simpler handling time.  

However, the real clincher is when you start thinking about changing it to fit your game.  If I want to run a BECMI style game, for example, I don't need to consider how to tweak negative hit point amounts to make it work.  I just throw the exhaustion rules out, either toss death saves or reduce them to one save (to throw a bone to what used to be the minor negative hit point amount).  Voila, I've got a more deadly version that plays a lot like the earlier game.  Or if the reason I'm running 5E instead of BECMI is that I want different healing rules, I can also tweak to suit.  (This is, in fact, part of what I meant when I said elsewhere that while I was running a style of game somewhere about halfway between BECMI and 5E, I found it easier to get there by modifying the latter, then running it with the sensibility of the former, rather than the other way around.)

Plus, I would not discount the emotional impact of the death save being a simple roll for a binary state.  It means that the game changes when zero is hit, even if the default options make that mostly shallow for anyone that has done the math.  For some players not much inclined to math, "Roll a death save" is scarier than "Mark down -12 hit points."   The change also has subtle effects on the relative severity of single nasty creatures versus hordes of smaller ones.  I think some of those effects are even intended.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1020127The original statement made by Gronan was "There is no such thing as "unsuitable death"" , with no qualifications. I was disputing that.

And I would have said the same as him:).
I don't see why we should add "in my opinion and tastes vary" to all posts expressing personal preferences. Any reasonable reader should assume that as the baseline, especially on this site. I mean, even if it's only you that disagrees, obviously opinions vary, even if the other poster thinks your opinion is wrong-headed.
Granted, there are some forums where adding a defensive clause about your personal opinion is almost required, but this one isn't one of them;).

Quote from: AsenRG;1020217And I would have said the same as him:).
I don't see why we should add "in my opinion and tastes vary" to all posts expressing personal preferences. Any reasonable reader should assume that as the baseline, especially on this site. I mean, even if it's only you that disagrees, obviously opinions vary, even if the other poster thinks your opinion is wrong-headed.
Granted, there are some forums where adding a defensive clause about your personal opinion is almost required, but this one isn't one of them;).

In this case it was a comment on a another poster's campaign, not on his own, so while he may have meant it to be an IMO comment, it's not clear.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1020262In this case it was a comment on a another poster's campaign, not on his own, so while he may have meant it to be an IMO comment, it's not clear.

No, it's absolute, total, objective, and verifiable truth.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020266No, it's absolute, total, objective, and verifiable truth.

I think what Gronan's trying to say is there is no suitable or unsuitable Death, there's just Death and it comes for us all.  Sure maybe if you had a choice you might prefer the "Death of Leonidas" to the "Death of Richard the Lionheart" or the "Death of Henry V", but when you think about it, Leonidas had a great death, but arguably the others had greater lives, based on what we remember of them.

If you're authoring a story, then you get to be "Richard the Lionheart, and I'm going to have a great career and die a hero." Ok, wow, cool, now why are you playing a game for this again?  To pretend you're not authoring a story? :D  

If you're not authoring a story, then if you walked out into the street after buying your first sword, missed your Dex check and got run over by a runaway Gongfarmer's cart, then I guess you weren't John Hawkwood, destined to be one of the world's most famous mercenaries.

That's why the whole "RPGs create stories" thing is horseshit, it leads directly to the "and the PCs are literary protagonists with script immunity" syndrome which defeats the whole purpose of the RPG both the "roleplaying" and the "game" part.

Or, perhaps, Gronan was doing a piss-take.

Excellent points, though.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020338Or, perhaps, Gronan was doing a piss-take.

Yeah I understand some of you older guys do that a lot. :p

Quote from: Bren;1020343Yeah I understand some of you older guys do that a lot. :p

Or else we have trouble doing it at all.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1020292I think what Gronan's trying to say is there is no suitable or unsuitable Death, there's just Death and it comes for us all.  Sure maybe if you had a choice you might prefer the "Death of Leonidas" to the "Death of Richard the Lionheart" or the "Death of Henry V", but when you think about it, Leonidas had a great death, but arguably the others had greater lives, based on what we remember of them.

If you're authoring a story, then you get to be "Richard the Lionheart, and I'm going to have a great career and die a hero." Ok, wow, cool, now why are you playing a game for this again?  To pretend you're not authoring a story? :D  

If you're not authoring a story, then if you walked out into the street after buying your first sword, missed your Dex check and got run over by a runaway Gongfarmer's cart, then I guess you weren't John Hawkwood, destined to be one of the world's most famous mercenaries.

That's why the whole "RPGs create stories" thing is horseshit, it leads directly to the "and the PCs are literary protagonists with script immunity" syndrome which defeats the whole purpose of the RPG both the "roleplaying" and the "game" part.

I agreed with this before but after talking to a lot of other players, I think the "writing a collaborate story together" angle isn't a bad way of playing.

It's just a different one. Some people appreciate the coherence and clarity of having a more "put together" kind of game, rather than the more typical D&D one which is a bunch of blind cats herding each other at random in a direction and hoping to get lucky.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1020454I agreed with this before but after talking to a lot of other players, I think the "writing a collaborate story together" angle isn't a bad way of playing.

It's just a different one. Some people appreciate the coherence and clarity of having a more "put together" kind of game, rather than the more typical D&D one which is a bunch of blind cats herding each other at random in a direction and hoping to get lucky.

Okay, but how do you lose?

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020460Okay, but how do you lose?

In those kinds of games, it is less about winning or losing and more about exploring the character's morals and personality.

Of course, if you want a game where it's more about playing out the process, ie., like a virtual real world rather than answering a question or exploring a personality facet then that kind of thing won't work.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020460Okay, but how do you lose?

You get out voted?


Is the way in which some people play shared story telling really all that mystifying?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020411Or else we have trouble doing it at all.

Getting old does kind of suck. Over the weekend my wife and I watched a fairly forgettable movie called Undercover Grandpa. It was mildly diverting but had a couple of funny moments. In the right mood, you might enjoy it. It's about a grandson, his grandpa, and a bunch of old geezers who were special forces types in the grandpa's unit who drag themselves out of retirement to help out the grandson. One of the old guys said something about how he has to get up 8 times a night to pee. "Six of them in the toilet." I had to pause the movie just so I could laugh for about 3 minutes straight.

I might give it a look.

Ever see "Secondhand Lions?"

QuoteSometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

I don't think I saw the whole movie, but I liked that line a lot.

Quote from: Bren;1020547Is the way in which some people play shared story telling really all that mystifying?

Is the concept that shared storytelling isn't really a game all that mystifying? Or that some statements are actually leading questions?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1020487In those kinds of games, it is less about winning or losing and more about exploring the character's morals and personality.

It seems a bit pointless, unless there are stakes involved.

So, if character death is off the table, and you want to explore the utility of cruelty versus compassion you can see effective your take over of they city-state is. Which guilds can you recruit, which factions? How much wealth can you accumulate? How much power? How many orphans rescued and given decent lives, or how profitable your mines are once you enslave them?

Utilizing your characters to examine philosophical issues is all well and good, but what are the goals? If you somehow discover that your character is like Leon in The Professional, "never women, never children", is raising up Mathilda to follow in your footsteps a win or a loss?

Having some sort of stakes, however you want to define them, and defining their gain or loss is what makes it a game. If its little more than cooperative storytelling, that's fine, but you can go with a much more simple rule set for that.

Quote from: Bren;1020547Is the way in which some people play shared story telling really all that mystifying?

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020605It seems a bit pointless, unless there are stakes involved.

Alright, fifty-zillionth time around this particular obstacle course.

• Some people play role-playing games with an emphasis on the game.
• Some people play role-playing games with an emphasis on the playing of a role.
• Some people who prefer the former don't understand why those who prefer the latter bother with the trappings/pretense of a game instead of making it a pure acting/storytelling exercise.
• People who prefer the later are not beholden to the people who prefer the former to do so.
• The two are not in competition in any way (except maybe in reserving a table at the FLGS at a given time) and it boggles my mind how often it seems people need to artificially create conflict between the two.

That about cover it? I miss anything? :p

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1020487In those kinds of games, it is less about winning or losing and more about exploring the character's morals and personality.

Of course, if you want a game where it's more about playing out the process, ie., like a virtual real world rather than answering a question or exploring a personality facet then that kind of thing won't work.

Yes.

But consider that you can also focus on exploring morals and personality without any sort of plot control.

And I would argue that it actually borks morality pretty damn hard when the universe gives you plot armor.

I think it also tends to distort it and set people up to be extra-fragile about consequences, as seen in certain threads I've read on other forums posted by confused GMs whose players said they wanted to try a harsh dangerous game and then sulk when they lose some hitpoints and/or get cursed in the process of taking on more powerful enemies than they should have expected to, ignored GM warnings, etc.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1020613... That about cover it? I miss anything? :p

Do you lump the people who say they care about "genre emulation" and "creating a story" in with the people who emphasize playing a role? I wouldn't, because my favorite RPG players like both the game and the roleplaying, but don't want "genre emulation" (or don't want it to override the game logic) and understand the "story" is something you might choose to talk about to celebrate what happened in the game after the game's events have been played out.

But you could just extend the form of your list to say there are people who focus on various aspects and not others.

However, I think there are some conflicts and incompatibilities between some of those mindsets, and that's what these discussions tend to be about: how best to serve different goals, talking about what we do and don't do and why, and noticing the details of the contrasting interests and approaches of others.

And of course, expressing why the approaches of others wouldn't work for us. And not just for catharsis and being right, but because if some things aren't expressed, then the expectations of the hobby drift in ways that don't take those things into account.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1020613Alright, fifty-zillionth time around this particular obstacle course...

That about cover it? I miss anything? :p

Yes, the whole point, in fact.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic, the OP;1018117I am curious how "old school D&D gaming" handles deaths of high level characters (though, really, this applies to anyone playing D&D anywhere ever). We all know that low level characters can often die, and depending on how stereotypical the "fantasy vietnam" game is, they die in droves...

How do you handle the death of such characters?

Now, if we are exempting character death as a fail state because it disrupts the flow of the game, what are we playing for? This statement is not to imply that other reasons or fail states are sub-par, but to discover the goals of the game. If we are exploring how flexible our character's morals are in relation to their duty to their patron, then either loss of the patron or the compromising of their morals is the fail state. If the attempt to balance the freedom of adventure with the duties to clan are what we are exploring, then perhaps the lack of an heir is the fail state and the production of an heir is a win, with the size of the fortune amassed at that point is the degree of their win.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1020487In those kinds of games, it is less about winning or losing and more about exploring the character's morals and personality.

So, again, how do you lose? What is the motivation behind the adventuring? Why are these people not farmers and craftsmen? What is it about the personalities that makes them take these risks (ostensibly death, but whatever it is they are risking in the game), and what would it take for them to go home and not take these risks? To actually find enough wealth to have a home? To fall in love with the person they were sent to rescue?

I ask this because you seem to want to have a game where death isn't really an option. Fine, that's not necessary. But if you are going to have a situation where you are going to have adventures you need conflict, and threat of death isn't really there. So, where is the conflict, the motivation for adventure? What are these adventurers risking, what are there goals, and what are they willing to do to achieve them?

And if that last sentence isn't what mAcular is pursuing, I have misunderstood the question.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020604Is the concept that shared storytelling isn't really a game all that mystifying?

I understand the assertion. But absent an explanation of what the writer means by "shared storytelling" I can't tell whether a vague and undefined phrase like "shared storytelling" excludes any and all activities that a reasonable person would accept as being a game.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020605Having some sort of stakes, however you want to define them, and defining their gain or loss is what makes it a game.

Cooperative storytelling can include stakes. (It doesn't have to, but it can.) As a simple example, the stakes could be how much of the shared story any one particular person has provided. So if you want to assign a winner, the person who provided the most story wins. Or the person who provides the least story loses. Or you create a rank ordered hierarchy of winning-ness.

If two or more people take turns tossing a ball/frisbee/flaming torch/what-have-you around until one of them fails to catch the object, is that a game?

Quote from: Skarg;1020620But you could just extend the form of your list to say there are people who focus on various aspects and not others.

Yeah, shocking ain't it?:D

QuoteHowever, I think there are some conflicts and incompatibilities between some of those mindsets, and that's what these discussions tend to be about....

And I'm fine with that. What occasionally gets my goat are the people in the various camps who don't seem to understand the very obvious fact that different people like different things, focus on different things, value different things, etc. and that terms or categories like RPG do not have the kind of clear and unambiguous definitions that terms or categories like parallelogram, rectangle, and square possess.

I apologize, I seem not to be communicating effectively.

Quote from: Bren;1020640Cooperative storytelling can include stakes. (It doesn't have to, but it can.) As a simple example, the stakes could be how much of the shared story any one particular person has provided. So if you want to assign a winner, the person who provided the most story wins. Or the person who provides the least story loses. Or you create a rank ordered hierarchy of winning-ness.

True, but not what I am referring to. You're not trying to win against the other player, any more than the Medic is trying to beat the Researcher in Pandemic. Usually "winning" is defined as character survival. If character death is inconveinient, then perhaps a different goal may have more utility. It seems like the OP finds that risk undesirable, and was looking to see how other people deal with that in higher level or longer lasting games.

QuoteIf two or more people take turns tossing a ball/frisbee/flaming torch/what-have-you around until one of them fails to catch the object, is that a game?

No, it's a pastime.

QuoteWhat occasionally gets my goat are the people in the various camps who don't seem to understand the very obvious fact that different people like different things, focus on different things, value different things, etc. and that terms or categories like RPG do not have the kind of clear and unambiguous definitions that terms or categories like parallelogram, rectangle, and square possess.

Which is why I'm asking about campaign and character goals to clarify, so as to better understand. What gets my goat is people telling me "it's different" and expecting me to just drop the line of conversation. I won't benefit from the perspective of others that way. "...focus on different things..." is what I'm inquiring about, Bren. Or, do you think that's not worth learning about?

Well, in the specific case that I was talking about, it was other people's games.

In MY game, that the OP is about, PCs have died left and right. But the people I was worried about were players who had their original, first ever PCs, from Day 1, and had nursed them to high level without suffering any deaths yet. So I didn't want them to get so discouraged that they just quit playing or stop trying to get invested in their characters or something since they lost so much with their first ones.

However, the other people's games I was talking about isn't COMPLETELY no goals or stakes. There are stakes and goals, but it's way less sandboxy -- the GM directs the scenes around a central premise that the party has to tackle, that the game "is about." So you can say it's a more linear game. The combats are also designed to roughly match the party rather than be totally open ended situations. The situations that are available to them and the way the characters are hooked into the premise ensure that they travel along the path to deal with game's main issues rather than just run off to invade a random dungeon. The party can still die, and they can lose stakes like, trying to rescue a hostage, for instance.

In fact, the campaign ended with the "main question" being resolved by one PC coming to an answer that opposed another PC, and them fighting over it and one dying.

But basically, it would be a game with the "you trip over a trap and some rats eat you" style deaths not ever coming up.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1020645In MY game, that the OP is about, PCs have died left and right. But the people I was worried about were players who had their original, first ever PCs, from Day 1, and had nursed them to high level without suffering any deaths yet. So I didn't want them to get so discouraged that they just quit playing or stop trying to get invested in their characters or something since they lost so much with their first ones.

IME losing a very high level character normally does not have that effect. There is more a feeling that the arc of that character's life has been fulfilled, they have completed their destiny. I recall when one player lost his demigod-level 1e PC, he was very happy to start again at 1st level.
I think very frequent PC death OTOH does discourage players.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020642I apologize, I seem not to be communicating effectively.

:)  OK. Let's see if we can both communicate more clearly. First off, sometimes when discussing RPGs pronouns can become confusing as there is some slippage between the "I" of the player and the "I" or "him" of the player character. In my example the winner/loser I was referring to was the player, not a character. With winning/losing correlated to how much of the shared story that player had told.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020642True, but not what I am referring to. You're not trying to win against the other player, any more than the Medic is trying to beat the Researcher in Pandemic.

Does the noun that corresponds to the "You're" in your sentence above you refer to above the player, the player's PC, or someone else?

In any case, I don't know what you mean by "the Medic is trying to beat the Researcher in Pandemic." I'm not familiar with Pandemic. What is it?

QuoteUsually "winning" is defined as character survival.

I disagree that winning is or should be defined as character survival. Simple character survival isn't the only win/loss condition for virtually any player in any RPG I've ever seen. Dying is often, though not always, considered to be a fail or losing state for the vast majority of players (and RPGs) though there are a few exceptions e.g. heroic deaths, avoidance of fate's worse than death, etc. I've even seen quite a few players for whom death was a preferable outcome to surrender. Certainly reasonable people would agree that there are other measures of winning aside from or beyond simple survival, e.g. which PC or player acquired the most treasure, magic items, tech items, experience points, valuable in game contacts, in game knowledge or secrets, etc. Similarly there are other measures of failure like the loss of valuable resources, enduring unpleasant interactions during play (for either the player or their PC). So when I play an RPG and I want to look at my win/loss state, I compare value acquired (however one measures or defines value) vs. value lost or expended.

Also I assume that each of the other players perform a similar calculation whether consciously and explicitly or intuitively and implicitly. Some of the rewards and losses the player values are known to me as the GM and are one's that I as the GM may create or control. Some rewards and losses are subjective to the player and may be conscious, unconscious, or a combination of the two. Some players may share their views and valuations and some may not. Indeed the player may not even be able to clearly articulate which values they hold most dear while gaming. And those values will often change over time (perhaps even during the same session) and may be effected by all sorts of out-of-game factors e.g. the player who had a stressful real world day and who therefore atypically really wants to kill something in game in that one session.  

Suffice it to say I find the focus solely on character death vs. survival misses much if not most of the winning and losing that people associate with playing their character in an RPG.

QuoteNo, it's a pastime.

As is playing and running RPGs, not so? When I was a kid we referred to "playing a game of catch."

QuoteWhich is why I'm asking about campaign and character goals to clarify, so as to better understand. What gets my goat is people telling me "it's different" and expecting me to just drop the line of conversation. I won't benefit from the perspective of others that way. "...focus on different things..." is what I'm inquiring about, Bren. Or, do you think that's not worth learning about?

Learning about what other people like is good. I think you might learn more (better? faster?) about what other people like by not assuming you already know what constitutes the most important aspects of winning or losing for those other folks.

Some things I've noticed over the years.

• Quite a few players refuse to have their character surrender even when faced by overwhelming odds. Some even choose death over surrender.
• More than a few players are extremely resistant to any sort of authority figure in the setting. This may express itself as smarting off to or insulting authority figures in a way that very few people would ever do in the real world.
• A few players really hate to have their PC look bad, whether looking bad means failing at certain important tasks, failing repeatedly at things their character is supposed to be good at or at the skills that the player sees as central to their character, being made fun of by NPCs in the setting, or something else.
• Quite a few players are very resistant to the use of any form of social mechanics or controls on their PC. Examples include: the opposed traits and passions in Pendragon, especially anything related to fear, cowardice, or lack of bravery, the Sanity mechanic in Call of Cthulhu, spells in D&D like Charm Person, Hold Person, or Fear, threats or intimidation against their PC up to and including actual torture of the PC and again of course #1 above.

The above would seem to indicate that survival isn't the only place to look for win/loss states.

Quote from: S'mon;1020646IME losing a very high level character normally does not have that effect. There is more a feeling that the arc of that character's life has been fulfilled, they have completed their destiny. I recall when one player lost his demigod-level 1e PC, he was very happy to start again at 1st level.
I think very frequent PC death OTOH does discourage players.

How often are we talking?

When I first started GMing and the campaign was at lower levels, character death was pretty regular, and everyone would restart at level 1. After three years of playing twice a month, the highest death counts are 2-3 players with 4 deaths a piece.

The aggressive, reckless players, are the ones who would die, and the cautious ones would survive (the ones who still have their original PCs). However, this can create the perverse effect of making everyone afraid to ever do anything.

Nowadays, I've made things more forgiving to encourage investment into characters, but a character dies now and then. Also they are higher level now so it's harder to die.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1020656How often are we talking?

I think losing a PC every session or so, or just "regularly", can be discouraging.

Quote from: Bren;1020648In any case, I don't know what you mean by "the Medic is trying to beat the Researcher in Pandemic." I'm not familiar with Pandemic. What is it?

It's a cooperative boardgame where the players try to contain the spread of four diseases worldwide while researching the cures. Everyone wins or everyone loses, and rather fun. I brought it up because you seemed to think I was talking about players trying to best each other, and I wasn't. But, this is getting into "I think you think I think" business, and I don't want to go there.

QuoteI disagree that winning is or should be defined as character survival. Simple character survival isn't the only win/loss condition for virtually any player in any RPG I've ever seen. Dying is often, though not always, considered to be a fail or losing state for the vast majority of players (and RPGs) though there are a few exceptions e.g. heroic deaths, avoidance of fate's worse than death, etc. I've even seen quite a few players for whom death was a preferable outcome to surrender. Certainly reasonable people would agree that there are other measures of winning aside from or beyond simple survival, e.g. which PC or player acquired the most treasure, magic items, tech items, experience points, valuable in game contacts, in game knowledge or secrets, etc. Similarly there are other measures of failure like the loss of valuable resources, enduring unpleasant interactions during play (for either the player or their PC). So when I play an RPG and I want to look at my win/loss state, I compare value acquired (however one measures or defines value) vs. value lost or expended.

I agree, especially the bolded part.

QuoteSuffice it to say I find the focus solely on character death vs. survival misses much if not most of the winning and losing that people associate with playing their character in an RPG.

Still agreeing.

QuoteLearning about what other people like is good. I think you might learn more (better? faster?) about what other people like by not assuming you already know what constitutes the most important aspects of winning or losing for those other folks.

I don't assume such, that's why I'm participating in the discussion. I can only start from my point of view, however, and then expand or change my mind with discourse with others. However, I seem to have given you the impression that character survival was the only thing important to me.

QuoteSome things I've noticed over the years.

• Quite a few players refuse to have their character surrender even when faced by overwhelming odds. Some even choose death over surrender.
• More than a few players are extremely resistant to any sort of authority figure in the setting. This may express itself as smarting off to or insulting authority figures in a way that very few people would ever do in the real world.
• A few players really hate to have their PC look bad, whether looking bad means failing at certain important tasks, failing repeatedly at things their character is supposed to be good at or at the skills that the player sees as central to their character, being made fun of by NPCs in the setting, or something else.
• Quite a few players are very resistant to the use of any form of social mechanics or controls on their PC. Examples include: the opposed traits and passions in Pendragon, especially anything related to fear, cowardice, or lack of bravery, the Sanity mechanic in Call of Cthulhu, spells in D&D like Charm Person, Hold Person, or Fear, threats or intimidation against their PC up to and including actual torture of the PC and again of course #1 above.

The above would seem to indicate that survival isn't the only place to look for win/loss states.

Indeed. We can even expand your list with the alternate win/loss states I mentioned above (gaining of stable wealth, producing an heir, protecting one's extended family).

I think you've made a faulty assumption since I was focused on discussing character death, which was a point of discussion of the OP. Thus, I was inquiring what else was of interest.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1020664I think you've made a faulty assumption since I was focused on discussing character death, which was a point of discussion of the OP. Thus, I was inquiring what else was of interest.

Yes, I was making that assumption.  I got the impression that you didn't understand how an RPG could still be a game if PC survival or death was no longer at stake. It's a point of view I've seen on the Internet before. I apologize if I have jumped to a hasty and incorrect conclusion. At this point I think I have lost the thread of what it is (if anything) that you find perplexing about the type of play that mAcular Chaotic was describing.

If you feel like clarifying that would be great and I'll see if there is anything I can productively contribute to that discussion. I will also understand if you don't feel like rehashing or rephrasing things already said and just want to move on. :)

Quote from: S'mon;1020661I think losing a PC every session or so, or just "regularly", can be discouraging.

Depends.  If you keep charging ogres with your 1st level PC, you're going to keep losing PCs.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020777Depends.  If you keep charging ogres with your 1st level PC, you're going to keep losing PCs.

How discouraging.

Quote from: Bren;1020793How discouraging.

"Learn anything yet?"

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020777Depends.  If you keep charging ogres with your 1st level PC, you're going to keep losing PCs.

I had a GM who had an adventure all set up for our 1st level PCs.

GM: "Approaching the castle, you see the Ogres on the battlements."

Players: "We leave."

GM: ""

He really did expect us to attack an ogre fortress at 1st level. :rolleyes:

I would have given you a couple hundred XP each for using your brains.

Did he say how he expected you to win?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020811I would have given you a couple hundred XP each for using your brains.

Did he say how he expected you to win?

I think he expected us to attack and kill the ogres (this was in 3.0 BTW where ogres do something like 2d8+7 per hit against 12 hp Fighter-1s). He seemed to have no concept of threat level. Later on we found he'd throw ridiculous overwhelming attacks at us then fudge massively to not kill us.

Oh, okay.  "Not familiar with the system" explains a lot.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020798"Learn anything yet?"

Not yet. ;)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1020818Oh, okay.  "Not familiar with the system" explains a lot.

If only there were some sort of instruction manual he could read that explained the system. :D

I know for sure that my PCs really hate those kinds of no-save situations that might kill off a high-level PC. But ultimately they more or less recognize the fairness of it.