Bringing back to life dead characters [Archive] - Wizards Community

Bringing back to life dead characters [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
DMDaddy
10-26-06, 01:25 AM Ok, it's a given that my players will die...lol. Let me rephrase, my player's characters. They will die if I play full rules no punches pulled.

The rules give several option but all seem to reduce levels (unless you have money for True Ressurection). This seems to punish the party and the whole game and make it no fun for the one who is brought back to life with lesser levels.

I'd hate to penalize them with level reduction because they are stupid and die often. Solutions:

Should I erase the level reductions?
Should I offer sub-quests to regain lost levels for the revived character?
How do I help the players to not be disadvantaged?

In general, how do other DM deal with this problem? Keep in mind that I have players that are always here to play. If I reduce the fun when they die, then it doesn't seem conducive to good session. Should I have new characters ready for each session in case one dies? I don't know, looking for input.
BevisIscariot
10-26-06, 01:36 AM In the game I DM, characters don't lose levels when brought back from the dead. Instead, they accrue a negative level (like some undead dish out) that stays with them until they've made up the xp "defiicit" -- that is, the xp they would have lost. The effects of a temporary negative level simply reflect the character's weakened state after undergoing the arduous ordeal of death/resurrection -- but he doesn't suddenly "forget" how to do something he used to be able to do, a consequence level loss brings with it and which I always disliked. After the character has gotten some sunlight and some exercise (ie. adventured a little) he regains his strength and loses the negative lvl. My players like it better than level loss; I like it better from a roleplaying point of view -- everybody's happy.
skelmar
10-26-06, 01:41 AM in my game i make true rez easier to come by, but DDO has a nice system that u lose future xp rather than past xp
richelieu
10-26-06, 02:43 AM Speaking as a DM who recently had an accidental near-TPK (3 out of 4) I still suggest you stick with the rules. The players who don't die are rewarded for their good strategy and caution. Players who die are encouraged to focus on good armor and saves, rather than killer weapons. If you kill PCs a lot, expect them to avoid classes such as Rogue, Monk, and Ranger, because those are the classes in my experience the most likely to kick the can.
I found that after my near TPK my players made classes like cleric and fighter, nice sturdy classes with a good chance of living and goog Fort saves especially.
I feel that the rules are nicely balanced as they are and we ought not fiddle around with them too much. Just don't send Bodaks after the party, because you can't Raise someone killed with a death effect.
Xariach
10-26-06, 04:15 AM I houseruled that you can choose wheather you lose 1 con or lvl, everyone was very pleased.
Archangel62
10-26-06, 05:59 AM In the game I DM, characters don't lose levels when brought back from the dead. Instead, they accrue a negative level (like some undead dish out) that stays with them until they've made up the xp "defiicit" -- that is, the xp they would have lost. The effects of a temporary negative level simply reflect the character's weakened state after undergoing the arduous ordeal of death/resurrection -- but he doesn't suddenly "forget" how to do something he used to be able to do, a consequence level loss brings with it and which I always disliked. After the character has gotten some sunlight and some exercise (ie. adventured a little) he regains his strength and loses the negative lvl. My players like it better than level loss; I like it better from a roleplaying point of view -- everybody's happy.

Hrm...I actually like this idea, I do something similar in my games when it comes to item crafting, but then I use some variations on the crafting rules anyhow.
Tormsskull
10-26-06, 06:56 AM Maybe instead of asking this question to need to ask yourself why your players are always dieing. If you have new players who don't quite understand the rules, then you should definitely be pulling your punches. If you have experienced players that simply aren't as clever as you, then once again, I'd recommend pulling your punches.

If you feel your game is "fair" and that the PCs still die, I'd recommend going with BevisIscariot's suggestion. My group has used something similar to that in the past when we have played with rez magic (we usually play no rezzing).

Good luck
DarknessEternal
10-26-06, 07:04 AM My group doesn't even allow dead raising effects. Once you're dead, that's it.

Assuming you don't care for that, follow the exact rules of the game. If you aren't aware of it, people who are lower level gain MORE experience than their higher level partymates in 3.5.

That is intentional. It ensures that everyone ends up the same level even if they are different levels at some point.
DMDaddy
10-26-06, 07:33 AM If you kill PCs a lot, expect them to avoid classes such as Rogue, Monk, and Ranger, because those are the classes in my experience the most likely to kick the can.
My concern with this is that they will only choose fighter classes and then no spell casters or rogues. Then after a while they will see a need for spell casters and rogues. What will happen is they will see the need to change and want to abandon a campaign for other characters.

Maybe instead of asking this question to need to ask yourself why your players are always dieing.
They die because they are idiots and won't use the rules to their advantage nor any special attacks, nor team work, nothing. So, I'm going to let them die over and over. In this way they may get a healthy respect and desire for the rules and special attacks.

Since they will die alot, I think I will use minus to const. until they get to 0, then no more character, he's dead for good. And I'll use negative levels as suggested. That way they will be penalized somewhat.
GenghisUber
10-26-06, 07:57 AM If you kill PCs a lot, expect them to avoid classes such as Rogue, Monk, and Ranger, because those are the classes in my experience the most likely to kick the can.
My concern with this is that they will only choose fighter classes and then no spell casters or rogues. Then after a while they will see a need for spell casters and rogues. What will happen is they will see the need to change and want to abandon a campaign for other characters.

Maybe instead of asking this question to need to ask yourself why your players are always dieing.
They die because they are idiots and won't use the rules to their advantage nor any special attacks, nor team work, nothing. So, I'm going to let them die over and over. In this way they may get a healthy respect and desire for the rules and special attacks.

Since they will die alot, I think I will use minus to const. until they get to 0, then no more character, he's dead for good. And I'll use negative levels as suggested. That way they will be penalized somewhat.

Two things:

1) Your players will definitely gravitate towards a very small number of classes. If you're a jerk and kill them repeatedly, then they will retaliate by powergaming or leaving the game. One of our DMs in our D&D group does this, and we all hate it and have super-optimized characters. Most of us hate having to make those types of characters but, like you, our DM aggressively punished us for not playing D&D according to his very narrow view of the game.
2) It is not the player's fault they are experiencing high mortality. They are trying to tell you how they want to play the game. They obviously want to play a different game than you do and you are punishing them for it. As the DM, you have unlimited power and with that comes the responsibility to make the game fun for everyone. Otherwise just make a chart that describes 100 different character deaths and have everyone roll percentage dice when they show up and let them go home early.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I'm just pointing out that D&D is supposed to be a cooperative experience between DM and players unless you're playing 1st edition and your name is Gygax. The core D&D game is pretty well thought out in all of its aspects and if you need to rewrite the rules about bringing dead PCs back to life, something's wrong.
Finarin Panjoro
10-26-06, 05:30 PM I also use the negative level approach mentioned by BevisIscariot. And I do something that he didn't mention. That is that a single negative level is the max that can be gained via death/resurrection. That is that if you die 3 times and are raised you still have only one negative level (though you'll have it for a longer period of time).

This has a number of advantages in my mind.
-It avoids the PC having to forget feats, skills, or abilities which they've already gotten used to using.
-It avoids the PC falling behind the others in level and thus the DM having to calculate XP differently for each player (less work for me).
-It reduces the likelihood of the player getting killed again (by virute of being weaker than the other PCs) and thus falling farther behind.

It also gives the player a short term goal. They look forward to the XP level at which they lose their negative level almost as much as they look forward to gaining a new one.
chiefcastor
10-26-06, 05:40 PM If they are dying for whatever the reason. Lower the Cr of the encounters. That is all that needs to be done. If they aren't killing as effenciently as they could, who cares. They will still have fun (maybe moreso) and that is really what it is about.
Man in the Funny Hat
10-26-06, 09:46 PM There is only one good reason for there to be rules for bringing a dead PC back to life - we want players to continue playing their characters. In other words, it's entirely a meta-game reason. But we also want to maintain a certain suspension of disbelief that the PC heroes keep coming back into the story (even from death) because some there is something in the gameworld that makes it possible. But the more we have to USE that deus ex machina excuse of resurrection or whatever the less realistic the game world seems to us as players.

So, to encourage players to minimize their need to use resurrection to keep their characters going it is associated with penalties that those characters have to accept if they DO use it. You should eliminate those penalties only if you want to encourage the PC's to be more carefree about death and dying in the game. The occasional PERMANENT death of a PC also helps maintain that suspension of disbelief; keeping up the illusion that the gameworld is REAL for the characters.
kadeity
10-27-06, 10:35 AM we use a very different system in my campaign. Whenever someone is ressurected, they gain the (revenant) subtype... which is in its own way a penalty, since certain kinds of characters dislike revenants greatly and the revenants can in some ways be affected as undead, given the right feat choices. Some people dislike the near-dead more than anyone. some people just dont care.

Druids for example abhor them, and would generally refuse to become a revenant. However i leave it up to each individual character as to where they stand on the issue of characters who have returned from the dead.

in my campaign, only neutral clerics will even CONSIDER ressurection, as a Good cleric of a Good deity doing so makes him have to become an ex-cleric or find himself a neutral deity. Clerics of Evil deities cant ressurect you unless they can channel positive energy, but if they channel negative enegy they can make you an ugly dead thing if you want.

In my campaign a Revenant is anyone who has been Raised or ressurected somehow. The only ressurected people who dont count as revenants are people brought back with the Wish Spell.

Anyone who wants a similar theme in their campaign should use the following feats as well.

EYES OF (DEITY)
prerequisites:Ability to cast a Detect Alignment effect or Detect Undead as a spell or spell like ability
Benefit:You may use Detect Revenant at will. (Revenants are revealed as if they were undead and you had cast detect undead.)

HANDS OF (DEITY)
prerequisites: Eyes of (deity), ability to turn undead.
Benefit:You may turn or rebuke Revenants as if they were undead.

TOOLS OF (DEITY)
prerequisites: Eyes of (deity), command or bolster undead.
Benefit:You may command or bolster Revenants as if they were undead.

WILL OF (DEITY)
prerequisites: Eyes of (deity), and either Tools or Hands of (deity)
benifit: you may have any spell that effects undead affect Revenants in a similar way.

Generally the idea of someone who has chosen the right feats, and can control undead up to a certain level of HD is an idea my players are afraid of... But since not just ANYONE can tell a revenant from a regular guy, and because its not usually a big deal, some characters choose this.

Its traditional in my campaign for any group of adventurers to sign a charter, stating what they intend to have done with their corpse if they die. the group agrees BEFOREHAND if they will raise or ressurect a particular party member.

And usually there will be a good cleric or paladin who is a revenant&undead hunter out there somewhere, and a necromancer who has purposes for "living" servants just as much as undead ones.

In addition to the aformentioned penalty, there is a 5% cumalative chance with each ressurection attempt that the ressurectee will have a botched ressurection. The player rollds d% each time a ressurection is attempted. if he/she rolls below his ressurection penalty, then it is a botched ressurection. If a ressurection is botched the character who was to be ressurected rolls a d10.

1-the character becomes a true undead.
(as per the necropolitain template from libris mortis)
2-the characters soul is lost, and another soul is brought back, one that has all of the statistics of the origional character, but is effectively a different character entirely. (usually an evil npc, or villan who the players have killed before. generally its a very bad thing :)
3-the character comes back sharing his body with a posessing spirit.
(generally a fiend of posession prc fiend from fiend folio)
4-the character loses 1d4 STR permenantly
5-the character loses 1d4 DEX permenantly
6-the character loses 1d4 CON permenantly
7-the character loses 1d4 INT permenantly
8-the character loses 1d4 WIS permenantly
9-the character loses 1d4 CHA permenantly
10-the body is destroyed and the ressurection simply fails.
(if their is not body, then the attempt fails.)

this is how we do it and its very flavorsul, fitting our campaign well.
ed_zero
10-27-06, 11:44 AM Ok, I apply the rules as it but stumbled upon this dilema.
A character died 2 times and lost 2 levels...
A new player joined the party and I decided to give him average level wich came to be above the recurrently dying player. obiously the player felt that it was unfair to "punish" him for dying and that it will be more "fair" to make another character and let his old one die so that he does not loose as many levels.
The question is: What should be the right thing to do?
alecthemad
10-27-06, 12:10 PM In previous campaigns I have used a rule that you lose half the exp to get to the next level. I used this to even out the unfairness of losing all your experience if you were more than halfway to the next level. This way the penalty scales with level and lets people who are almost next level not lose anything.

But I really think you need to solve the problem of your players dying. First you need to really take a hard look at your own work. Do you make enemies smarter than they should be? Are your encounters really balanced? Are you making encounters that can only be defeated in a certain way? Most player dying problems are solved with addressing these things.

If you can truthfully say that it is not on your end then I think you need to help your players out some. Give them some suggestions on tactics. If they make a bad choice take a second to let them know why it is bad and give them suggestions or at least another chance.

Also, I think Ghengisuber had some good advice.
natural_selection
10-27-06, 01:09 PM Ok, I apply the rules as it but stumbled upon this dilema.
A character died 2 times and lost 2 levels...
A new player joined the party and I decided to give him average level wich came to be above the recurrently dying player. obiously the player felt that it was unfair to "punish" him for dying and that it will be more "fair" to make another character and let his old one die so that he does not loose as many levels.
The question is: What should be the right thing to do?

- If somebody dies and gets resurrected, apply the normal penalties.
- If somebody dies and creates a new character his starting level is one lower than the level of a still living character who has the least level.
- If a new player is introduced to the group his starting level is too one level lower than the level of a still lving character who has the least level.
--> My rules and I like them. My players seem to have accepted it.
Man in the Funny Hat
10-27-06, 11:42 PM Ok, I apply the rules as it but stumbled upon this dilema.
A character died 2 times and lost 2 levels...
A new player joined the party and I decided to give him average level wich came to be above the recurrently dying player. obiously the player felt that it was unfair to "punish" him for dying and that it will be more "fair" to make another character and let his old one die so that he does not loose as many levels.
The question is: What should be the right thing to do?There's nothing wrong with allowing the player to roll up a new character - ESPECIALLY if the character has been saddled with things like heavy permanent ability score losses, severe level drain that can't be reversed, curses that the player does NOT want to play, and more. I've left characters dead because they were already out of money and in debt and I simply didn't want to accumulate even more debt in paying for raise dead. It was a totally UNfun situation for the character to be in and the simple solution was to just roll up a new one.

However, IF the player wants to keep playing his twice-dead PC then he MUST accept the level loss penalties just as ANY other character would have to if there WEREN'T another new PC coming in at what would now be a higher level.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
DMDaddy 10-26-06, 01:25 AM	Ok, it's a given that my players will die...lol. Let me rephrase, my player's characters. They will die if I play full rules no punches pulled. The rules give several option but all seem to reduce levels (unless you have money for True Ressurection). This seems to punish the party and the whole game and make it no fun for the one who is brought back to life with lesser levels. I'd hate to penalize them with level reduction because they are stupid and die often. Solutions: Should I erase the level reductions? Should I offer sub-quests to regain lost levels for the revived character? How do I help the players to not be disadvantaged? In general, how do other DM deal with this problem? Keep in mind that I have players that are always here to play. If I reduce the fun when they die, then it doesn't seem conducive to good session. Should I have new characters ready for each session in case one dies? I don't know, looking for input.
BevisIscariot 10-26-06, 01:36 AM	In the game I DM, characters don't lose levels when brought back from the dead. Instead, they accrue a negative level (like some undead dish out) that stays with them until they've made up the xp "defiicit" -- that is, the xp they would have lost. The effects of a temporary negative level simply reflect the character's weakened state after undergoing the arduous ordeal of death/resurrection -- but he doesn't suddenly "forget" how to do something he used to be able to do, a consequence level loss brings with it and which I always disliked. After the character has gotten some sunlight and some exercise (ie. adventured a little) he regains his strength and loses the negative lvl. My players like it better than level loss; I like it better from a roleplaying point of view -- everybody's happy.
skelmar 10-26-06, 01:41 AM	in my game i make true rez easier to come by, but DDO has a nice system that u lose future xp rather than past xp
richelieu 10-26-06, 02:43 AM	Speaking as a DM who recently had an accidental near-TPK (3 out of 4) I still suggest you stick with the rules. The players who don't die are rewarded for their good strategy and caution. Players who die are encouraged to focus on good armor and saves, rather than killer weapons. If you kill PCs a lot, expect them to avoid classes such as Rogue, Monk, and Ranger, because those are the classes in my experience the most likely to kick the can. I found that after my near TPK my players made classes like cleric and fighter, nice sturdy classes with a good chance of living and goog Fort saves especially. I feel that the rules are nicely balanced as they are and we ought not fiddle around with them too much. Just don't send Bodaks after the party, because you can't Raise someone killed with a death effect.
Xariach 10-26-06, 04:15 AM	I houseruled that you can choose wheather you lose 1 con or lvl, everyone was very pleased.
Archangel62 10-26-06, 05:59 AM	In the game I DM, characters don't lose levels when brought back from the dead. Instead, they accrue a negative level (like some undead dish out) that stays with them until they've made up the xp "defiicit" -- that is, the xp they would have lost. The effects of a temporary negative level simply reflect the character's weakened state after undergoing the arduous ordeal of death/resurrection -- but he doesn't suddenly "forget" how to do something he used to be able to do, a consequence level loss brings with it and which I always disliked. After the character has gotten some sunlight and some exercise (ie. adventured a little) he regains his strength and loses the negative lvl. My players like it better than level loss; I like it better from a roleplaying point of view -- everybody's happy. Hrm...I actually like this idea, I do something similar in my games when it comes to item crafting, but then I use some variations on the crafting rules anyhow.
Tormsskull 10-26-06, 06:56 AM	Maybe instead of asking this question to need to ask yourself why your players are always dieing. If you have new players who don't quite understand the rules, then you should definitely be pulling your punches. If you have experienced players that simply aren't as clever as you, then once again, I'd recommend pulling your punches. If you feel your game is "fair" and that the PCs still die, I'd recommend going with BevisIscariot's suggestion. My group has used something similar to that in the past when we have played with rez magic (we usually play no rezzing). Good luck
DarknessEternal 10-26-06, 07:04 AM	My group doesn't even allow dead raising effects. Once you're dead, that's it. Assuming you don't care for that, follow the exact rules of the game. If you aren't aware of it, people who are lower level gain MORE experience than their higher level partymates in 3.5. That is intentional. It ensures that everyone ends up the same level even if they are different levels at some point.
DMDaddy 10-26-06, 07:33 AM	If you kill PCs a lot, expect them to avoid classes such as Rogue, Monk, and Ranger, because those are the classes in my experience the most likely to kick the can. My concern with this is that they will only choose fighter classes and then no spell casters or rogues. Then after a while they will see a need for spell casters and rogues. What will happen is they will see the need to change and want to abandon a campaign for other characters. Maybe instead of asking this question to need to ask yourself why your players are always dieing. They die because they are idiots and won't use the rules to their advantage nor any special attacks, nor team work, nothing. So, I'm going to let them die over and over. In this way they may get a healthy respect and desire for the rules and special attacks. Since they will die alot, I think I will use minus to const. until they get to 0, then no more character, he's dead for good. And I'll use negative levels as suggested. That way they will be penalized somewhat.
GenghisUber 10-26-06, 07:57 AM	If you kill PCs a lot, expect them to avoid classes such as Rogue, Monk, and Ranger, because those are the classes in my experience the most likely to kick the can. My concern with this is that they will only choose fighter classes and then no spell casters or rogues. Then after a while they will see a need for spell casters and rogues. What will happen is they will see the need to change and want to abandon a campaign for other characters. Maybe instead of asking this question to need to ask yourself why your players are always dieing. They die because they are idiots and won't use the rules to their advantage nor any special attacks, nor team work, nothing. So, I'm going to let them die over and over. In this way they may get a healthy respect and desire for the rules and special attacks. Since they will die alot, I think I will use minus to const. until they get to 0, then no more character, he's dead for good. And I'll use negative levels as suggested. That way they will be penalized somewhat. Two things: 1) Your players will definitely gravitate towards a very small number of classes. If you're a jerk and kill them repeatedly, then they will retaliate by powergaming or leaving the game. One of our DMs in our D&D group does this, and we all hate it and have super-optimized characters. Most of us hate having to make those types of characters but, like you, our DM aggressively punished us for not playing D&D according to his very narrow view of the game. 2) It is not the player's fault they are experiencing high mortality. They are trying to tell you how they want to play the game. They obviously want to play a different game than you do and you are punishing them for it. As the DM, you have unlimited power and with that comes the responsibility to make the game fun for everyone. Otherwise just make a chart that describes 100 different character deaths and have everyone roll percentage dice when they show up and let them go home early. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I'm just pointing out that D&D is supposed to be a cooperative experience between DM and players unless you're playing 1st edition and your name is Gygax. The core D&D game is pretty well thought out in all of its aspects and if you need to rewrite the rules about bringing dead PCs back to life, something's wrong.
Finarin Panjoro 10-26-06, 05:30 PM	I also use the negative level approach mentioned by BevisIscariot. And I do something that he didn't mention. That is that a single negative level is the max that can be gained via death/resurrection. That is that if you die 3 times and are raised you still have only one negative level (though you'll have it for a longer period of time). This has a number of advantages in my mind. -It avoids the PC having to forget feats, skills, or abilities which they've already gotten used to using. -It avoids the PC falling behind the others in level and thus the DM having to calculate XP differently for each player (less work for me). -It reduces the likelihood of the player getting killed again (by virute of being weaker than the other PCs) and thus falling farther behind. It also gives the player a short term goal. They look forward to the XP level at which they lose their negative level almost as much as they look forward to gaining a new one.
chiefcastor 10-26-06, 05:40 PM	If they are dying for whatever the reason. Lower the Cr of the encounters. That is all that needs to be done. If they aren't killing as effenciently as they could, who cares. They will still have fun (maybe moreso) and that is really what it is about.
Man in the Funny Hat 10-26-06, 09:46 PM	There is only one good reason for there to be rules for bringing a dead PC back to life - we want players to continue playing their characters. In other words, it's entirely a meta-game reason. But we also want to maintain a certain suspension of disbelief that the PC heroes keep coming back into the story (even from death) because some there is something in the gameworld that makes it possible. But the more we have to USE that deus ex machina excuse of resurrection or whatever the less realistic the game world seems to us as players. So, to encourage players to minimize their need to use resurrection to keep their characters going it is associated with penalties that those characters have to accept if they DO use it. You should eliminate those penalties only if you want to encourage the PC's to be more carefree about death and dying in the game. The occasional PERMANENT death of a PC also helps maintain that suspension of disbelief; keeping up the illusion that the gameworld is REAL for the characters.
kadeity 10-27-06, 10:35 AM	we use a very different system in my campaign. Whenever someone is ressurected, they gain the (revenant) subtype... which is in its own way a penalty, since certain kinds of characters dislike revenants greatly and the revenants can in some ways be affected as undead, given the right feat choices. Some people dislike the near-dead more than anyone. some people just dont care. Druids for example abhor them, and would generally refuse to become a revenant. However i leave it up to each individual character as to where they stand on the issue of characters who have returned from the dead. in my campaign, only neutral clerics will even CONSIDER ressurection, as a Good cleric of a Good deity doing so makes him have to become an ex-cleric or find himself a neutral deity. Clerics of Evil deities cant ressurect you unless they can channel positive energy, but if they channel negative enegy they can make you an ugly dead thing if you want. In my campaign a Revenant is anyone who has been Raised or ressurected somehow. The only ressurected people who dont count as revenants are people brought back with the Wish Spell. Anyone who wants a similar theme in their campaign should use the following feats as well. EYES OF (DEITY) prerequisites:Ability to cast a Detect Alignment effect or Detect Undead as a spell or spell like ability Benefit:You may use Detect Revenant at will. (Revenants are revealed as if they were undead and you had cast detect undead.) HANDS OF (DEITY) prerequisites: Eyes of (deity), ability to turn undead. Benefit:You may turn or rebuke Revenants as if they were undead. TOOLS OF (DEITY) prerequisites: Eyes of (deity), command or bolster undead. Benefit:You may command or bolster Revenants as if they were undead. WILL OF (DEITY) prerequisites: Eyes of (deity), and either Tools or Hands of (deity) benifit: you may have any spell that effects undead affect Revenants in a similar way. Generally the idea of someone who has chosen the right feats, and can control undead up to a certain level of HD is an idea my players are afraid of... But since not just ANYONE can tell a revenant from a regular guy, and because its not usually a big deal, some characters choose this. Its traditional in my campaign for any group of adventurers to sign a charter, stating what they intend to have done with their corpse if they die. the group agrees BEFOREHAND if they will raise or ressurect a particular party member. And usually there will be a good cleric or paladin who is a revenant&undead hunter out there somewhere, and a necromancer who has purposes for "living" servants just as much as undead ones. In addition to the aformentioned penalty, there is a 5% cumalative chance with each ressurection attempt that the ressurectee will have a botched ressurection. The player rollds d% each time a ressurection is attempted. if he/she rolls below his ressurection penalty, then it is a botched ressurection. If a ressurection is botched the character who was to be ressurected rolls a d10. 1-the character becomes a true undead. (as per the necropolitain template from libris mortis) 2-the characters soul is lost, and another soul is brought back, one that has all of the statistics of the origional character, but is effectively a different character entirely. (usually an evil npc, or villan who the players have killed before. generally its a very bad thing :) 3-the character comes back sharing his body with a posessing spirit. (generally a fiend of posession prc fiend from fiend folio) 4-the character loses 1d4 STR permenantly 5-the character loses 1d4 DEX permenantly 6-the character loses 1d4 CON permenantly 7-the character loses 1d4 INT permenantly 8-the character loses 1d4 WIS permenantly 9-the character loses 1d4 CHA permenantly 10-the body is destroyed and the ressurection simply fails. (if their is not body, then the attempt fails.) this is how we do it and its very flavorsul, fitting our campaign well.
ed_zero 10-27-06, 11:44 AM	Ok, I apply the rules as it but stumbled upon this dilema. A character died 2 times and lost 2 levels... A new player joined the party and I decided to give him average level wich came to be above the recurrently dying player. obiously the player felt that it was unfair to "punish" him for dying and that it will be more "fair" to make another character and let his old one die so that he does not loose as many levels. The question is: What should be the right thing to do?
alecthemad 10-27-06, 12:10 PM	In previous campaigns I have used a rule that you lose half the exp to get to the next level. I used this to even out the unfairness of losing all your experience if you were more than halfway to the next level. This way the penalty scales with level and lets people who are almost next level not lose anything. But I really think you need to solve the problem of your players dying. First you need to really take a hard look at your own work. Do you make enemies smarter than they should be? Are your encounters really balanced? Are you making encounters that can only be defeated in a certain way? Most player dying problems are solved with addressing these things. If you can truthfully say that it is not on your end then I think you need to help your players out some. Give them some suggestions on tactics. If they make a bad choice take a second to let them know why it is bad and give them suggestions or at least another chance. Also, I think Ghengisuber had some good advice.
natural_selection 10-27-06, 01:09 PM	Ok, I apply the rules as it but stumbled upon this dilema. A character died 2 times and lost 2 levels... A new player joined the party and I decided to give him average level wich came to be above the recurrently dying player. obiously the player felt that it was unfair to "punish" him for dying and that it will be more "fair" to make another character and let his old one die so that he does not loose as many levels. The question is: What should be the right thing to do? - If somebody dies and gets resurrected, apply the normal penalties. - If somebody dies and creates a new character his starting level is one lower than the level of a still living character who has the least level. - If a new player is introduced to the group his starting level is too one level lower than the level of a still lving character who has the least level. --> My rules and I like them. My players seem to have accepted it.
Man in the Funny Hat 10-27-06, 11:42 PM	Ok, I apply the rules as it but stumbled upon this dilema. A character died 2 times and lost 2 levels... A new player joined the party and I decided to give him average level wich came to be above the recurrently dying player. obiously the player felt that it was unfair to "punish" him for dying and that it will be more "fair" to make another character and let his old one die so that he does not loose as many levels. The question is: What should be the right thing to do?There's nothing wrong with allowing the player to roll up a new character - ESPECIALLY if the character has been saddled with things like heavy permanent ability score losses, severe level drain that can't be reversed, curses that the player does NOT want to play, and more. I've left characters dead because they were already out of money and in debt and I simply didn't want to accumulate even more debt in paying for raise dead. It was a totally UNfun situation for the character to be in and the simple solution was to just roll up a new one. However, IF the player wants to keep playing his twice-dead PC then he MUST accept the level loss penalties just as ANY other character would have to if there WEREN'T another new PC coming in at what would now be a higher level.