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View Full Version : Death in Games: Death of Long-Term Characters



Mr. Mask
2014-04-03, 09:08 AM
Whether it be an MMO, a very long campaign, or a character who has lasted through several campaigns, death can suck. The amount it sucks depends on how easy (and frequent) death is, stacked against the ability to get better from it. If your cleric can revive you, then dying every other battle might seem more tedious than dreadful.

So, you can balance it in one direction, making death a non-issue (maybe only at higher levels). You can balance it in the other direction, and make death a persistent fear which completely removes beloved characters.



How do you like your death balanced? Harsh deaths (complete loss of major characters) that happen rarely? Constant death which can easily be reversed (presuming someone survives)?

What do you think is a good design for hardcore games with long-term characters, where death is not reversible? Or, you may think such a design is counter-intuitive?

What are your thoughts?

TheCountAlucard
2014-04-03, 09:17 AM
Depends on the game and system - I tend to prefer games like Shadowrun and World of Darkness and Exalted, in which death is permanent, but at the same time, player characters usually have active defenses that make random rolls unlikely to kill them outright unless they've really really screwed up or bitten off more than they could chew.

If a player character in my games dies in a way he or she can't (or can, but the player doesn't want to) come back from, I usually allow the player to come in with a new character at level (lowest level in the party -1), or contrive something similar in the case of non-level-based games.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-04, 11:48 PM
I like perma-death, partly from a worldbuilding perspective: Many institutions in the real-world are to an extent reliant on dead people staying dead. Figuring out the countless deep implications (political, cultural, economic, religious, and otherwise) of resurrection is not feasible.

Also, I feel like resurrection severely cheapens death, and by extension cheapens mortal combat too. If nobody in a fight would stay dead, why is it happening? What does anyone think they're going to achieve by making their opponents burn a thousand gold and sit in a celestial waiting room for a few hours? Why should we care about a fight if it's so inconsequential?

Mastikator
2014-04-05, 02:02 AM
Live by the sword, die by the sword. I prefer death to be permanent, resurrections should be retained solely in the domain where gods intervene.
Likelihood of death is mostly determined by two factors, one is controlled by the DM and the other is a matter of game design. Death by unlucky rolls isn't something I'm a fan of, it's very unlikely to randomly die, it happens but it's very rare for that to be a cause of death, most people can live for decades without ever dying by stupid random chance. Death should only be caused by two things, mainly. One is consistent bad decisions on the players behalf, the other is the DM pushing the PCs over the cliff. Both of these are fine.

It really depends on the game what I prefer, in Call of Cthulhu half of the PCs are expected to die every game session, in some other games you're not expected to ever die really. I can't say I am locked down into one game or another.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-05, 02:08 AM
most people can live for decades without ever dying by stupid random chance.

Most people don't have to confront bloodthirsty warriors or deal with deadly hazards on a regular basis :smalltongue:

Mastikator
2014-04-05, 02:26 AM
Yeah but those deaths should be thrust upon them by the DM, not just happen randomly. Or at least, it should be obvious every single time that death was close if not for a bad roll.

NikitaDarkstar
2014-04-05, 02:46 AM
While I'm not a huge fan of permanent deaths (assuming D&D 3.5 or similar system here, horror like CoC is not the game you go into expecting to be the hero who beats the odds) but I'm very against Resurrection and similar spells being common knowledge. Death simply shouldn't be fixable by a simple spell, and even after you come back it should have some consequences. The specifics would obviously vary from game to game and character to character, but basically coming back from the dead should be rather unexpected, and stuff you generally only hear about in fairy tales and legends, not something you pay your local cleric to sort out while you go get some lunch.

And yes, the political headaches involved with the dead not staying dead? While it would be interesting to figure out how such a society works it'd be a massive headache to deal with.