Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Elfen_Archangel 02-03-06, 10:15 AM	"When someone is more worried about getting their (insert random weapon here) sundered than dying, it seems like something's wrong. While LG is not real life, it strikes me as utterly silly if someone is more worried about losing some piece of metal than about losing their life." Someone said this and I thought my response needed its own thread. Perhaps there should be a number of deaths before you HAVE to stay dead. Maybe the third time you die, your soul just doesn't want to come back. Thanks. Have a nice day. Roll up another character. Matthew Schad
chrispedersen 02-03-06, 11:00 AM	But imagine it as a plot idea.... The gates to heaven (hell) have been closed...... and all throughout living greyhawk.. people are dying... That would add a bit of tension I suspect..... C
Moryath 02-03-06, 11:02 AM	"When someone is more worried about getting their (insert random weapon here) sundered than dying, it seems like something's wrong. While LG is not real life, it strikes me as utterly silly if someone is more worried about losing some piece of metal than about losing their life." Someone said this and I thought my response needed its own thread. Perhaps there should be a number of deaths before you HAVE to stay dead. Maybe the third time you die, your soul just doesn't want to come back. Thanks. Have a nice day. Roll up another character. Matthew Schad No, the problem is that LG is such a low-money campaign, Sundering is entirely too easy to do (especially if some mod writer writes in a rust monster or a carotid column or a Huge, 38-Strength creature some Sundering feats and a hankering for magic weapons) and that repairs aren't available. We have triads who regularly have "taxes" on their player base, leeching off GP's from them. Mandatory meta-orgs that do likewise in other regions. Face it, even in Welcome To Geoff, Here's Your Access, the cash isn't necessarily there. And when we DO find access to something, we have to pray that we've been saving our GP's for 15-20 modules just to buy that one item, because you'll never get enough money in 3 AR's before your Adventure access goes away. Why do you think every spellcaster in LG takes Craft Wondrous Item or Craft Rod or Craft Wand? Because it's not just half GP for spending some TU's (and face it, spent TU's aren't lost to that, you can always play modules with another character until you get your TU's back the next year) it's ACCESS. All of a sudden, every Wondrous Item you ever encountered can be yours. Or Wand. Or Rod. Or something. When you die, you die. You spend up to 5000 GP, you go down a level - big deal, in the span of the 5-6 mods you need to level, you've probably made your Rez cost back and some to spare. When your weapon is sundered? You didn't lose the XP to go with it. You didn't lose a level. You're exactly where you were, only instead of being just LG-style normally behind the gold curve, you're now 10,20,30,40,50 THOUSAND behind the gold curve. You're beyond underequipped. You might as well go hunting for a few cheap Raise Dead favors and get your butt killed 3,4,5,6 times, go back down to level 6 or 7, and start all over.
Britt 02-03-06, 11:09 AM	Welcome To Geoff, Here's Your Access That made me chuckle.
A'Talsen 02-03-06, 11:13 AM	2nd Ed. AD&D had such a restriction to raising (Your Con stat in # of times). D&D 3.0 got rid of that restriction, relying on the level loss penalty to resolve the issue, I think to the better. Whether better or not, though, this would a fundimental rules *change* away from core 3.5 D&D, and as such should not occure in LG. Michael "Fish" Murphy "When someone is more worried about getting their (insert random weapon here) sundered than dying, it seems like something's wrong. While LG is not real life, it strikes me as utterly silly if someone is more worried about losing some piece of metal than about losing their life." Someone said this and I thought my response needed its own thread. Perhaps there should be a number of deaths before you HAVE to stay dead. Maybe the third time you die, your soul just doesn't want to come back. Thanks. Have a nice day. Roll up another character. Matthew Schad
Moryath 02-03-06, 11:19 AM	That made me chuckle. Hey I've played some of your Bandit Kingdoms mods and with some of your BK players. You people play rough and getting access is like pulling teeth. You can always tell a BK player who's been out of region, he's the one NOT wearing rags (in character). Other places, hell, half the Limited list was available just by signing up for the right metaorg. Either way, it's not the raise deads that are the problem, it's the amount of cash players HAVE to put into their items, only to see them sundered by a DM having a bad day or by some mod writer who decided to write a mod to take away people's gear.
Elfen_Archangel 02-03-06, 11:23 AM	The Circle puts limitations out there for the LG campaign about D&D and has been since LG started. That's why we have Limited, NPC Only, and Restricted lists, and rulings all the time. Perhaps go to making it you can be Raised/Resurrected/Reincarnated a number of times equal to your Con bonus. Those with 8-11 con, no coming back, 12-13 they can come back once, etc... Matthew Schad
Moryath 02-03-06, 11:31 AM	The Circle puts limitations out there for the LG campaign about D&D and has been since LG started. That's why we have Limited, NPC Only, and Restricted lists, and rulings all the time. Perhaps go to making it you can be Raised/Resurrected/Reincarnated a number of times equal to your Con bonus. Those with 8-11 con, no coming back, 12-13 they can come back once, etc... Matthew Schad Oh, so now you're screwed for coming back because you were a 12-Con Elven Wizard instead of a 20-Con Dwarven Barbarian? NO. I Don't Think So. They do something like that, and I am out of here.
CSHunt68 02-03-06, 11:38 AM	Really, why is this even being discussed? Seriously.
Moryath 02-03-06, 11:41 AM	Really, why is this even being discussed? Seriously. Because Elfen_Archangel brought it up.
Iswald 02-03-06, 11:49 AM	The limitation is already written into the spells themselves. No change is required.
CSHunt68 02-03-06, 11:49 AM	It's a proposal to change the rules of D&D 3.5. Next.
SteveMND 02-03-06, 11:58 AM	The thought behind it is okay, but I think it's really a reaction to a more general perceived problem in the campaign -- namely, that our character's equipment is seen as more valuable than our character's lives, which should not be the case*. Putting a limit on the number of times one can be rezz'd, as the original poster suggested, may make people rethink their priorities. That said, I don't think limiting the number of times one can be rezz'd is the way to go about it. Ideally, we'd come up with a situation that make the toys less valuable to the players than the lives, but that's unlikely at this stage of the game. Something like a loss of 26 TUs when you die would sound reasonable to me, tho. It wouldn't necessarily cripple a character, but it may make him more concerned about his hide than his toys. However, these review periods (sadly) are seldom a viable method of introducing sweeping changes to the campaign, and I suspect something like this would be considered so. "It's a proposal to change the rules of D&D 3.5" Heh. Living Greyhak already has so many vast changes to the way D&D 3.5 Core rules operate, it's not even funny. This wouldn't even make a drop in the bucket. :) * I remember a specific table I was at where we came up against something that was obviously built around sundering. Everyone else at the table immediately put away the expensive weapons and such that they were good at and pulled out crappy disposable gear. IIRC, one guy died (or very nearly so; he said it was better than losing his sword), and the only person I think that was still effective against it was my PC, who continued to use the weapon he was focused and spec'd in. He of course lost his weapon after a few rounds, but the risk of a TPK was much higher as a result of people willing to die before losing their gear.
CSHunt68 02-03-06, 12:23 PM	What are some of the vast changes to the core 3.5 rules?
RanielK 02-03-06, 12:52 PM	I remember a specific table I was at where we came up against something that was obviously built around sundering. Everyone else at the table immediately put away the expensive weapons and such that they were good at and pulled out crappy disposable gear. IIRC, one guy died (or very nearly so; he said it was better than losing his sword), and the only person I think that was still effective against it was my PC, who continued to use the weapon he was focused and spec'd in. He of course lost his weapon after a few rounds, but the risk of a TPK was much higher as a result of people willing to die before losing their gear. This is a function of gold over cap butting up against limited access. Someone has A favor that gets them the item needed to make their character concept work. They use that favor (not likely to be seen again to grant THAT ITEM) and in the next mod face the Five Sunderers Adventure group who are in town making sure PC's don't get . . . well I'd say overpowered, except that just ain't so. Now in that same mod, the Five Sunderers Adventure Group has so much gear that the gold over cap is +3000 gp per character. That's not enough for one raise per person, but as long as it's not a TPK and folks are able to chip in, as long as one guy got away (and the mod doesn't specify some "unrecoverable" instance) then you can get folks back. They still have their stuff (which they probably couldn't replace short of a miracle, rl not the spell). They're one level lower, which allows more time to recoup the gold spent and get some more stuff. Even if there isn't gold over cap, there are a fair number of res for free or 1/2 price favors out there to take some of the onus off coming back. Now that being said, not every mod has g.o.c., and not every table has a total of 5000 gp floating around. So death can be permanent for a guy or cost him that nice thing to come back. I wonder how much g.o.c. was at the table you played. I also wonder how long it took you to get a replacement as good as the weapon you lost. Were you able to rebuild it exactly or was generic enough to be easy to replace? Miles
SteveMND 02-03-06, 01:51 PM	"I also wonder how long it took you to get a replacement as good as the weapon you lost. Were you able to rebuild it exactly or was generic enough to be easy to replace?" Well, luckily it wasn't anything too exotic at the time, butI doubt that would have changed how I played that game. I learned a very valuable lesson early on in the campaign, and that is not to put all your eggs in one basket. I tend to try and diversfy my gear as much as possible so losing any single item won't cripple my effectivness. People with almost everything wrapped up into a single item are just asking for trouble anyway. :)
JohnduBois 02-03-06, 02:02 PM	Well, luckily it wasn't anything too exotic at the time, butI doubt that would have changed how I played that game. I learned a very valuable lesson early on in the campaign, and that is not to put all your eggs in one basket. I tend to try and diversfy my gear as much as possible so losing any single item won't cripple my effectivness. People with almost everything wrapped up into a single item are just asking for trouble anyway. :) Thanks, Steve. I was trying to figure out whether I should add anarchic to my existing magic weapon, or get a different one. I think that cleared it up a bit. Anarchic starmetal it is...
Mattastrophic 02-03-06, 02:34 PM	There's really no problem with people caring more about their equipment than their lives. If you think that there is, that's because you come from the real world, in which we only get one shot at life. In the LG world, death is a temporary condition. And thus, it is perfectly fine for our characters to act as such. If a Raise Dead costs 5000gp, and a +1 Holy weapon costs over 18,000gp, then the weapon is obviously more expensive, and thus the weapon is obviously harder to replace than the life of the wielder. Putting a limit on deaths? BAD IDEA. All the deaths I myself have encountered head-on can be credited to three things: - Inherent randomness of dice - Antagonistic DMs - Player error (other people) - Player error (my own) The first three, I cannot control. The last, well, that's just getting better at the game, right? I shouldn't be permanently punished because I'm ironing out mistakes. I definitely shouldn't be permanently punished when other people screw up. I also play mostly elves, and as we know, elves tend to be very fragile. Should I be punished for that? Should I permanently lose my character because he has one less HP per level and the DM rolls two 20s in a row, putting him at -12? Um... no. Imposing a 26 TU penalty, also a BAD IDEA. We don't people suddenly dropping from cons because they got killed in Slot 1 and are down to -14 TUs. In short, there's no problem. The only thing I can see to complain about is that people who build their characters solely to survive may feel a need for some gratification, by watching the rest of us feel really nasty penalties because we didn't build our characters the same way. Weapons costing more than Raise Dead, that's part of the game. -Matt
JohnduBois 02-03-06, 02:45 PM	Limiting Raises also eliminates many character-based roleplaying choices (and balances the importance of ability scores even further in favor of Constitution). My main PC (a bard) currently has a very cavalier, "bring it" attitude because he's not paying for his next two Raise Deads, and will only be paying half price for his third. Limiting the amount of Raises takes away this very entertaining roleplaying opportunity. Likewise, I am about to start a new PC (a summoning cleric) who has an 8 in all his physical stats for no other reason than I want to provide a counter to the 8 WIS, 8 INT, 6 CHA dwarf fighters out there. With a limit on raises, I would probably not be playing this character. I don't see a way in which the system is currently broken, and I don't see why we would change the system to limit character and roleplaying opportunities when we don't have to.
SteveMND 02-03-06, 02:56 PM	"In the LG world, death is a temporary condition." I think that expertly sums up what many of feel is wrong with the campaign structure. Death shouldn't be viewed as mere trifle or inconvenience. It should be a harrowing, tragic event, and one where you should be truly concerned whether or not you'll be able to be brought back. Death should be viewed as the least attractive option in any circumstances, but sadly, such is not the case in the campaign currently.
CSHunt68 02-03-06, 02:59 PM	Welcome to Dungeons and Dragons. Enjoy your stay. :rolleyes:
SteveMND 02-03-06, 03:24 PM	I've been playing D&D for twenty-odd some years, and "death as a minor incovenience" has never been part of the underlying theme of the game. The seriousness of character death is a direct representation of how the DM of each campaign (or Circle, in the case of LG) wishes to handle such things. LG has decided to make coming back from the dead extraordinarily easy, and to a point, that's understandable, given the vast differences in structure between a regular home campaign and a global living campaign. Some of us just think that they may have just gone a little too far, now that so many players see their character's lives as more disposable than their gear, that's all. Personally, i'd prefer to see an approach that de-emphasize the toys a little more, but that's very unlikely to happen at this stage in the game.
Munkwunk 02-03-06, 03:34 PM	Mattastrophic's got it right. SteveMND: Like Matt said, I think the reason most people think the way you do on this amtter is because we, as real life people, know that death is not something you can come back from. We try to enforce these beliefs upon an unrealistic game world. In Dungeons and Dragons, there are several ways in which people can come back from the dead: Raise Dead, Resurrect, True Resurrection, Reincarnate, True Reincarnate, Clone, and Revenance. I'm probably missing a couple. If death were supposed to be a traumatic experience in D&D, there wouldn't be so many ways to escape it. The very core of the rules -- all of these spells used to escape death -- suggests that we throw our personal views of Real Life out the window and suspend our disbelief while we are in a D&D world -- any D&D world, not just LG. Given that, I don't think death should be a permanent thing at all, and I certainly don't think players should be extra-penalized with added TU costs for it. I have only had two character deaths to date (despite playing melee fighters). One was at the hands of a Slay Living and a bad saving throw roll (can't argue with the dice) while I was at full health. The other was when i had little choice but to play a level 2 character up to APL 4, and I got insta-killed by a vampire in a single hit (-2 negative levels for a 2 HD character... bye-bye!). Neither of these cases were a result of me being reckless, so why should I be punished? In the former case, my Clone came back and I was good to go. In the laterr, well, I couldn't afford a Resurrection with a 2nd level character, so I regretfully had to leave him perma-dead. In D&D, death is generally something that a player can recover from. It's no big deal. It shouldn't be. The game is meant to be fun first and foremost, and constantly re-rolling characters and starting at level 1 because you rolled a 1 on a saving throw versus a Save or Die effect is nobody's idea of fun.
Mattastrophic 02-03-06, 03:44 PM	I think that expertly sums up what many of feel is wrong with the campaign structure. Death shouldn't be viewed as mere trifle or inconvenience. It should be a harrowing, tragic event, and one where you should be truly concerned whether or not you'll be able to be brought back. Death should be viewed as the least attractive option in any circumstances, but sadly, such is not the case in the campaign currently. Your post brings up another important point. You are asking that the Circle legislate roleplaying, which is a big no-no. Death is as harrowing and as tragic as you make it. How a character handles dying a horrible death, and thus how that character sees death, is up to the player, not up to the Circle. -Matt
CSHunt68 02-03-06, 04:04 PM	Precisely. Being raised from the dead has ALWAYS been part of D&D. Period. Maybe I missed the part where I was supposed to ignore this fact ... Don't legislate your own real-life experiences onto the _fantasy_ role-playing of others. Thanks. While we're at it, let's leave the CORE RULES alone, shall we?
bertman4 02-03-06, 04:12 PM	Speaking of equipment and sundering, now that you can repair destroyed magic items, I wonder if we're going to see more sundering in the campaign? Bertman
SteveMND 02-03-06, 04:29 PM	I see we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one and move on to other topics, as our viewpoints on RPGs and the role of a character in them are obviously very different. And yes, many ways are available to bring a character back from the dead, but that doesn't mean they are all suppposed to be as easy and casual as walking into Raises-R-Us. WotC themselves said that one of the reasons they raised the "price" of some of those types of spells in 3.5 was because they didn't want players to start thinking of them as some sort of cheap, free ride that should be casually tossed around. And for the record, I'm certainly not trying to legistlate how anyone RPs. I'm not talking about how the character's reaction to his own death should not be cavalier -- maybe the PC has a death wish, or whatever -- but rather am suggesting that the player not take quite so cavalier of a regard to the death of a character (although I will argue that yes, it's a fantasy world, but it's still based on themes, perspectives and elements of our own world, and I very seriously doubt any of the races or cultures we're allowed to play in the campaign are so incredibly alien that their own mortality is not valuable to them). The circumstances of the campaign means I've seen far too many people (IMHO, of course) that seem to regard LG like some big video game. How many power-ups can I get, how many extra lives do I have, when was my last save game point? This, in my personal opinion of course, is a damn shame, because this means that those players are really missing out on what is supposed to make an RPG unique from those other sorts of pastimes. Again, that's just a matter of opinion, and I suppose doesn't belong in this particular forum, as that's not something likely to have any impact on the campaign as a whole.
solbergb 02-03-06, 07:29 PM	I've been playing D&D for twenty-odd some years, and "death as a minor incovenience" has never been part of the underlying theme of the game. The seriousness of character death is a direct representation of how the DM of each campaign (or Circle, in the case of LG) wishes to handle such things. I dunno. I've been playing since the late 70s, and after level 6 or so, recoverable deaths *were* just a bump in the road. It was in fact a rare character that made it to retirement without dying once or twice. Level drain now...THAT we feared. Why? Because restorations were far more difficult to achieve than raises (L7 spell, when L7 was the equivalent of a modern level 9 spell, vs level 5 spell). You didnt' want to die 14 times and be removed, but if your con was lower than 15, a point of con cost you exactly nothing...until you got into the con=7 or lower range. Even a commoner could die 3 times before any real game effect would occur. There was a very slight chance of character removal due to resurrection failure %, similar to rolling on the modern reincarnation tables in LG (although 20% was getting down into the con 8 range). All you needed was access to a level 9 cleric. There wasn't any 5000gp "nut" to make either mechanically, but old-school NPC spellcasters tended not to cast spells that required direct communication with the deity (level 5+) without a good reason, either a dead follower of some renown, or PC's doing "Favors" or donating magic items. After a few years of LG - I don't see the attitude being much different. One death isn't a big deal . Dying 4 times in a weekend...can be pretty shattering. A rez is worse than a raise...but anything in LG that causes you to lose levels also gives you adventure opportunities to make the money back. My monk died at level 10, and lost about 6000xp. By the time he was level 10 again, he'd more than earned back 5000gp. Had my monk instead had his slippers of spider climb melted, he'd be level 10 with 5000gp cash less than he had before, and no way to ever make it up. That's why sundering is considered worse than death. Because your power level doesn't drop by lowering your level (that's ok...you can play at lower APL and you can also contribute normally for your level). Instead your power level drops permanently while your level forces you to play as if it had not happened. It isn't D&D as such (both toys and raises are a default, ingrained part of D&D, every bit as much as the save or die spells and concept of armor making you harder to hit). It's the fact that LG accurately reflects the normal penalty for death (lower power level, but also ability to "catch up" after a while - and lower EL's if you keep dying)...but does NOT accurately reflect the normal penalty for sundering (temporary loss of capability until the DM provides a cash rich encounter to get you back to normal cash/level - or lowering of EL's if the situation is permanent) Toys are important in LG, because cash and toy access are tightly controlled. Only changing that dynamic will make people stop crying about sundering...and I don't think changing that dynamic is practical in a campaign of this size.