Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Corman May 03, 2010 5:36:17	It has always seemed to me that LFR has little or no penalty for character death, compared to previous Living campaigns. Last night, my opinion was confirmed during a discussion with other players and DMs. I had just DM'd a module that can theoretically inflict as harsh a death penalty as possible (EAST 1-1, These Hallowed Halls). It has an option for instant mass party kill (no roll needed), monsters that utterly consume bodies and all equipment if they defeat the PCS, and even a chance to raise a dead PC as an NPC monster to battle it's former friends. It has long been considered one of the 'deadliest' and most challenging low level adventures - a local favorite, if you will. My players avoided getting killed fairly easily because of the group composition (two clerics with Moment of Glory all but guarantees party survival), but the post adventure discussion of what might have happened brought up a few interesting points. I'll quote the relevant section of rules regarding character death, according to the CharGen document (version dated Feb 2010). I'm highlighting important phrases in color, for emphasis. = = = Character Death Adventuring can be dangerous business. Your character might succumb to those dangers and die. However, death for your character is usually a temporary situation. If your character dies during the course of the adventure, you and the rest of your group have two options, provided that the group has access to the Raise Dead ritual (either a PC has it and can use it or the characters return back to civilization), they have access to the body, and it is possible to return your character to life. • Pay the component cost for the ritual. If the group chooses this option, the cost should be divided evenly amongst the group (500 gp for heroic tier, 5,000 gp for paragon tier, and 50,000 gp for epic tier). Using a source outside the group to cast the ritual costs 20% more than the component cost. Total cost when using an outside source is 600 gp for heroic tier, 6,000 gp for paragon tier, and 60,000 gp for epic tier. A PC that dies and chooses this method of return gains full (or half, if the party was defeated) experience points from the encounter in which the character died, but no experience points for any encounters that were missed while the character was dead. If there’s still more of the adventure remaining, the PC continues to earn experience as normal, and receives a normal cut of the rewards at the end of the adventure. • Invoke the Death Charity clause. If the group cannot afford to pay for the ritual, doesn’t desire to pay for it, or doesn’t have access to the body, the PC can choose to return back to life at the end of the adventure. Doing so forfeits all rewards (including treasure and story rewards) earned for the adventure except experience points gained prior to the character’s death (the character receives the experience point award for the encounter in which they died). The PC cannot participate in the same adventure a second time. = = = The second option, the Death Charity clause, means that you simply cannot lose a character in regular LFR play - ever. The absolute worse that can happen to any PC (or group) is that they lose the XP & loot for the adventure in which they died (except for any XP they earned prior to their death). Note that the wording of the Death Charity clause contradicts the wording in the first paragraph. You do not have to have access to the body, or the ritual, in order to magically return to life at the end of the adventure. Death is not "usually a temporary condition", in LFR it is ALWAYS a temporary condition lasting (at most) until the end of the adventure in which you die. How, as a DM, am I supposed to maintain any sense of challenge (risk) for my LFR players when they know that they are literally immortal?
#2 therion666 May 03, 2010 6:23:55	How, as a DM, am I supposed to maintain any sense of challenge (risk) for my LFR players when they know that they are literally immortal? Although I admit that personally I do find the game loses a bit due to the ease of restoration of a character, it's just the way the system has been set. Hopefully in the next LFR campaign they may make it more lethal. For now the players do suffer the loss of a sessions worth of gold and XP's so it's not like they have nothing to lose if their character dies.
#3 Ore May 03, 2010 7:13:12	Personally I like the current system. Knowing how easily my character can come back after the module (or even during it) does not diminish how challenged I feel while progressing through a storyline. I'm never so focused on the future that I cannot enjoy the challenge of overcoming the moment I am in. And those times when I fail to overcome a challenge stick with me well enough that I don't need any further penalties. I still cringe when I hear the words, "Lost in the Fog." My dwarf cleric got whacked in that module and while he is still kicking now I remember the day I failed to survive that final battle. I roleplay the character as still dealing with that day as well. Basically, stricter rules on death wouldn't make the game any more challenging for me. Nor would they make the game any more fun. In fact, stricter rules would make this game less fun for me overall. So I hope they never change the rules on character death in the living campaign. Just my two cents.
#4 Uthrac May 03, 2010 7:22:05	Especially at higher levels, having a character that a player has invested a lot of time into die = not fun.  And what would happen with a group that plays together and one gets perma-killed?  Sorry - the rest of us are H3, but you need to start a new character? Mechanically speaking, the death clause is IMHO an excellent game-mechanic to keep the game fun. If you and your group would prefer a more lethal experience, there's nothing stopping you from agreeing that if your LFR character dies [under X circumstances] that you'll not come back to life.  (i.e. If that level of lethality is fun for you, there's nothing stopping you [personally] from doing it!) However, that style of play cannot (and should not) be enforced on players who do not find that style fun.
#5 Dragon9 May 03, 2010 7:57:52	It has always seemed to me that LFR has little or no penalty for character death, compared to previous Living campaigns. Last night, my opinion was confirmed during a discussion with other players and DMs. I would like to point out that the lack of penalty to death isn't an LFR phenomenon.  It's a 4e thing.  The only thing LFR did was make the Charity of Death clause and say that you didn't need to have a recoverable body to use CoD. There's no reason that a PC couldn't come back even from a TPK in the mod you mentioned.
#6 SYB May 03, 2010 8:11:39	Inconsistency makes me cry. All over the D&D forums, I see people making claims that a +1 bonus to attack is insanely powerful or the lack of a +1 bonus to attack makes a character unplayable (see any of multiple threads on Expertise or primary ability score).  Yet, whenever people talk about death, they slough off the -2 attack penalty (that lasts at least 6 encounters) as if it is meaningless.  That penalty is pretty rough and I am dumbfounded that anyone would suggest otherwise. As for permanent death, I personally am glad it is no longer part of living games.  My enjoyment of LG disappeared quickly after having a succession of characters permanently killed before they reached level 3.  This wasn't from being stupid or making completely sub-optimal characters.  The unreasonable difficulty levels of the modules I played on and some bad luck simply led to dead characters.  And, I can tell you, it was absolutely no fun for me.  I kept losing character concepts I wanted to play and never got a chance to play higher level adventures. If you don't like the level of lethality in the game, feel free to choose to change it (for yourself).  If you remember, Diablo II allowed you to make a "hardcore" character.  If the character ever died, it was permanently deleted.  You could personally choose to make the same decision.  There is nothing stopping you.  That would make death more threatening.  And, if you are unwilling to do something like that, then obviously you prefer the game the way it is. Non-problems always have simple solutions. -SYB
#7 Corman May 03, 2010 8:56:16	Inconsistency makes me cry. All over the D&D forums, I see people making claims that a +1 bonus to attack is insanely powerful or the lack of a +1 bonus to attack makes a character unplayable (see any of multiple threads on Expertise or primary ability score).  Yet, whenever people talk about death, they slough off the -2 attack penalty (that lasts at least 6 encounters) as if it is meaningless.  That penalty is pretty rough and I am dumbfounded that anyone would suggest otherwise. As for permanent death, I personally am glad it is no longer part of living games.  My enjoyment of LG disappeared quickly after having a succession of characters permanently killed before they reached level 3.  This wasn't from being stupid or making completely sub-optimal characters.  The unreasonable difficulty levels of the modules I played on and some bad luck simply led to dead characters.  And, I can tell you, it was absolutely no fun for me.  I kept losing character concepts I wanted to play and never got a chance to play higher level adventures. If you don't like the level of lethality in the game, feel free to choose to change it (for yourself).  If you remember, Diablo II allowed you to make a "hardcore" character.  If the character ever died, it was permanently deleted.  You could personally choose to make the same decision.  There is nothing stopping you.  That would make death more threatening.  And, if you are unwilling to do something like that, then obviously you prefer the game the way it is. Non-problems always have simple solutions. -SYB Interesting reply, though it has almost nothing at all to do with the question I posed in my original post. You think a -2 to hit for about one full adventure is "rough"? And that a +1 or -1 penalty makes a character unplayable? (/shrug) Compared to being dead and staying that way, yes, it is an insignificant penalty, easily ignored or compensated for in play. Your bad experiences in LG (and unwillingness to reroll a character concept more than once, apparently) somehow translate into "If I'm unwilling to play permadeath rules with my own characters I must prefer LFR the way it is"? What does any of that have to do with what I asked? At least your closing sentence was relevant to your own reply, if not to my OP. The question was (and remains): "How, as a DM, am I supposed to maintain any sense of challenge (risk) for my LFR players when they know that they are literally immortal?" Note that nowhere do I say, or even imply, that I need advice on how to play my own characters. Nor did I ask for the RPGA to remove/change the CoD clause. I asked how to maintain a sense of challenge for my LFR players, when they know they are effectively immortal. Non-answers are simplest to post, I guess.
#8 Corman May 03, 2010 9:12:55	Hmm...I tried to reply to Dragon and something in the forums went kablooey. I apologize if this becomes a double post. "There's no reason that a PC couldn't come back even from a TPK in the mod you mentioned." I agree completely. Even though the adventure is written so that it does (without the CoD clause) present a chance for permanent death, there is no sense of risk for the players at all. Even with a TPK, with all bodies and equipment utterly consumed by the monsters, the entire group can simply invoke the CoD clause at the end - and carry on with all gear and posessions intact, and still get full XP for the encounter where they got wiped out. (Note that the 1st option under character death says 'half XP' but the CoD option says they get full XP for the encounter in which they died.)
#9 Uthrac May 03, 2010 9:16:32	"How, as a DM, am I supposed to maintain any sense of challenge (risk) for my LFR players when they know that they are literally immortal?" You, as a DM, should discuss the challenge (and risk) level with your players and find a set of "consequences" that they will agree is fun.  They may find any/all of these within the appropriate level of risk: • The 3-milestone penalty • Loss of treasure and story awards • Loss of money to pay for raising • Losing ("failing") the mod • Cannot replay the mod with the same character For many players, LFR is a game first. (Hey - just go back to the last save-point, eh?) I don't know any players in my community who feel the need to "increase the penalty" for character death.
#10 gomeztoo May 03, 2010 9:35:27	Note that the 1st option under character death says 'half XP' but the CoD option says they get full XP for the encounter in which they died. Full xp means the same xp as everyone else who did the encounter. In the case of a TPK that is half xp, since they failed it (well,normally, anyway). Failing an encounter earns half xp. Succeeding earns full xp, even when you died. I would advise to focus on the story and keep PCs involved so they have an interest to succeed. Losing then means something, and ups the challenge. It should not really be a problem that PCs can be brought back from the dead - or at least it should not really impact the adventure challenge. It may make players less worried about loosing their PC, but that is not a bad thing as long as they still worry about failing. Gomez
#11 sigfile May 03, 2010 11:43:00	How, as a DM, am I supposed to maintain any sense of challenge (risk) for my LFR players when they know that they are literally immortal? There's a lot more playing in to it than you might realize.  People's time is valuable.  Failing an encounter is painful (wasted time, lost XP).  Failing an adventure is VERY painful (time, lost XP, rewards, and the inability to EVER make up that lost adventure).  Losing a character completely because the pick-up-group party didn't cohere properly (or, god forbid, griefers)?  Forget it. There's plenty of challenge without having to threaten a character sheet with a lighter.
#12 gristooth May 03, 2010 12:02:21	Mods do have goals that characters need to accomplish in order for them to fully complete the adventure. Dead characters might come back to life in the next adventure, but unless someone can raise them, they won't help anymore in the current one. The threat of not successfully completing the adventure because a character died in the middle of it should provide enough motiviation by itself.
#13 corwynn May 03, 2010 12:32:03	"Perma-death" doesn't really add much to the game.  As an analogy, it would be like playing "Neverwinter Nights" or "Baldur's Gate" without saves. I understand the concept of "if there's no penalty for failure, then PCs aren't as motivated".  The problem is that perma-death is too severe.  This is a game, and it's important to remember that we play this for our enjoyment.  Nobody wants to play a PC for a year and invest so much in it just to see it vanish due to bad dice rolls or a bad mix of PCs or a killer scenario. Finding the right balance is important.  As others have pointed out, there is already quite a bit of penalty.  Most importantly, the failure itself: people hate to lose.  If you look at the evolution of gaming, you'll see that games focus less and less on "hard-core" gaming (no save points, etc...).  For instance, the majority of people do not use the "hard core" mode in those video games that offer it. If you really want to experience "hard-core" DnD, then you can choose to do so.  Just don't resurrect the PC using the Charity of Death clause.  But don't expect the majority of people to enjoy "hard-core" mode, and IMHO trying to impose it on them would be counter-productive to the game flourishing.
#14 Dragon9 May 03, 2010 14:03:32	Even with a TPK, with all bodies and equipment utterly consumed by the monsters, the entire group can simply invoke the CoD clause at the end - and carry on with all gear and posessions intact, and still get full XP for the encounter where they got wiped out. (Note that the 1st option under character death says 'half XP' but the CoD option says they get full XP for the encounter in which they died.) Gomez pointed out the relevance of the XP issue on character death (a TPK would be 1/2 xp).  A TPK would end the mod for the party.  The CoD clause would just allow them to rez their PCs, but the CoD rules say invoking the CoD clause returns you to life at the end fo the mod.  So you don't just rez on the spot and keep going. For many players, losing out on the rest of the mods, xp and treasure would be a significant penalty for a TPK.  Even just xp/gp/treasure is a significant enough penalty for most players for individual character death. Inconsistency makes me cry. All over the D&D forums, I see people making claims that a +1 bonus to attack is insanely powerful or the lack of a +1 bonus to attack makes a character unplayable (see any of multiple threads on Expertise or primary ability score).  Yet, whenever people talk about death, they slough off the -2 attack penalty (that lasts at least 6 encounters) as if it is meaningless.  That penalty is pretty rough and I am dumbfounded that anyone would suggest otherwise. A -2 to hit?  Pfft.  Compared to losing a level, mod rewards, or perma-death, a -2 is nothing.  And no, I don't think a +1 to hit or not is a big deal.  It's nice, but whatever.  A -2 that doesn't stick around forever is no sweat.  It's a slap on the wrist compared to previous penalties.
#15 bgibbons May 03, 2010 14:08:54	A -2 to hit?  Pfft.  Compared to losing a level, mod rewards, or perma-death, a -2 is nothing.  And no, I don't think a +1 to hit or not is a big deal.  It's nice, but whatever.  A -2 that doesn't stick around forever is no sweat.  It's a slap on the wrist compared to previous penalties. Had I the option of choosing to lose a level upon being raised, I'd be quite happy to do so.  Even leaving aside the increased gold/level ratio, getting effectively level-capped isn't much fun. Getting the opportunity to play three more adventures before having to shelve a character isn't much of a punishment. I've never quite understood the "we need death to have more meaning!" argument.  If you want death to have more meaning, you're free to not have your character raised.  If the only way you can have fun in the campaign is by forcing another player to stop playing his character, I'm not really that interested in making sure you have fun.
#16 Mommy_was_an_Orc May 03, 2010 16:04:34	How, as a DM, am I supposed to maintain any sense of challenge (risk) for my LFR players when they know that they are literally immortal? How were you as a DM supposed to maintain any sense of risk outside a TPK for high level LG characters when they get more powerful after you kill them(because then they start to break the gold curve) It is a game. Most players I know find dying in a mod an abject failure that they don't want to have happen. You don't need to screw up the campaign to create challenge and most of the other options do just that - screw up the campaign.
#17 imaginaryfriend.inv May 04, 2010 2:46:25	I see this topic pop up now and then and I wonder... I wonder where those hordes of players are. Those players who consider death irrelevant and play without a care if their PC dies or not. I have not come across one yet.  Now if I had seen those hordes, throwing themselves at adventures without a care for their PC's wellbeing I might consider it a problem, but as is to me its starting to sound a bit like "in my time, when we played D&D the path to the tavern was always uphill, 10 miles, in the snow, with rabid owlbears lining the track and spellturret traps with howl of the banshee every 10 feet and a 100 Bodak audience gazing at your every step. And when we died, we stayed dead! Dead i tell you! None of this charity stuff"  Sure, mechanically its fairly inconsequential especially when compared to editions of yesteryear but as Mommy_was_an_Orc writes (rephrased and -interpreted); players hate  losing and most of them consider a PC death a loss. On the whole I think players do just fine penalizing themselves for a PC death. It does not need more mechanics. As many have stated ( I just like to parrot, sue me.. better yet, get me a cracker) players that want or need more from death, which can be perfectly sensible from an RP perspective, are completely free to do that. I am a big fan of the line "You can't win at D&D" maybe that has something to do with my difficulty to understand the insistence of some that character death must be made the way to lose at D&D. Anyway, trying to get my rambling back to the question of how to challenge as a DM.  Challenge to me is linked to a true chance of failure. What the players consider failure however is a personal thing. If your players truly do not care about PC death or other ways to "fail" then there is really nothing you can do IMHO. I don't however feel adding more negative reinforcement is likely to make the players suddenly care.  Other threads deal with the lack of Player<>Character attachment. I think this issue is largely linked to it. (note I play in the Netherlands, not a huge D&D sample size. I am not stating the hordes I mention do not exist.. I just haven't seen any. Even in LG where death was a huge win at level 11+ I did not really see people running towards the reaper.)
#18 SYB May 04, 2010 8:02:44	Yeah, I didn't really read the OP.  Maybe that is because of the wall of text or more likely because after about 3 words in, I realized that I have read that post about 30 other times on this forum before and it wasn't really worth reading to get the exact details. It is always variations of the exact same gripe anyway.  I just assumed this was a "I can't have fun because my character can't permanently die post."  I didn't realize that it was actually "I can't have fun because I can't permanently kill off the characters of my friends, thus removing their fun." Given, that it is the second and not the first, any discussion really is moot.  That kind of DM vs. PC mentality does not contribute to fun.  The game is supposed to be fun.  If the players are having fun, then it doesn't matter one bit whether they fear character death. As I said before, non-problems have simple solutions. -SYB
#19 sigfile May 04, 2010 10:10:11	I think the OP's just looking for suggestions on how best to motivate/challenge the players, knowing that the character's simply *can't* be removed from play.  I'm not getting the grognard vibe.  He's just looking for a carrot and stick. There's motivation aplenty.  Your carrots are XP and loot.  Your stick... is not awarding XP and loot (at least, not as much) to the dead characters.  But, look at it like this -- LFR adventurers are thrown in to weird and very dangerous situations with absolutely NO guarantee that the other adventurers are competent or have anyone's interests at heart but their own.  And it's not like you can just ditch a member of the expedition mid-adventure.  Survival and success aren't assured, and those ARE worth celebrating.