A redressing of the Death Penalty and Cleric Raises

[Zool]

There's undoubtedly some cool ideas here.

One thing I'd like to pick at a bit though is:

If death has positive consenquences (you unlock part of a story, a character feature, or get one of the five key words to the secret dungeon) then...

I would simply die the requisite 50 times on the newbie quest to unlock all the stuff at the start of my character.

Now what?

But yeah, there is a lot of cool stuff in there, it'd just need to be carefully thought out to figure out how to keep death something that you don't want- while still trying to retain the other parts of this.

You can question why do you want death to be something you don't want to happen, and that's a fine conversation to have - but at the end of it all, the player doesn't care about dying (especially if it's actually good) then that will definately change the way life is valued, and the roleplay around it.

So the question probably becomes, what do we want death to be like on the server?

If we want death to be something people try to avoid, or something people want to apply onto thier enemies, then some of the above would need a lot of thought, and would probably be more complex to design into the game than this post suggests.

If it's "just a part of adventuring, doesn't really matter too much" then all of the above would be cool.

[Swifty Willownall]

I am leaning more towards the camp that death should have consequences. If there is no fear of death OOC, then there won't be much fear of death IC.

That said, I do think there is merit in perhaps opening up options or giving the player some control in how those consequences are dealt with. I do like the idea of making death more of an experience. Not necessarily a necessity, but to make it more interesting.

Some of the other choices could also include:

1. You take the exp penalty, raise, and can quickly get back into the action.

2. You have to go through a quest or event or maze. It takes a longer bit of time, but the exp penalty is reduced or removed.

3. You don't lose exp on respawning, but you gain an exp debt. This way you don't lose any of your progress, but further growth is paused until you earn enough to pay off that debt.

4. Dying resets your exp back to the start of whatever level you are on.

Issues with being max level would need to be addressed but these are just some ideas.

[Mr.Moloch]

@Zool Very good point, and I'd suggest that once we find a way to make death fun or interesting or compelling to roleplay using one idea, or options of ideas -- the issue then is to implement a "side affect" (i'm avoiding the word "consequence" purposefully). So there is a trade off.

Heck, you can balance these trade offs against the status quo by letting players pick. If everyone picks Option A over Status Quo, one or the other needs adjustment. Give players Option A, B, C, D and Status Quo -- now players have choices, DMs have tools for new stories, and you can track what option is maybe too harsh or too appealing by looking at data.

[O-louth]

@Mr-Moloch

Personally I like the idea of death not sucking as much. And trying to make it more fun. But! I think in order to achieve it, there needs to be “more” than one way back. Options are fun. Options means not just the alternative method is used. Options give choices. And it makes a city of dead come alive (pun intended).

Imagine “The city of Judgement / the dead”, where you can find more than one way back.

• There could be demons and devils offering a TR in exchange for your soul (but you can only do it once, you get shifted to CE, and now have to roll with that)
• you can “earn your keep” in a demons attacking the city quest, where you fight waves of nasties, and sort of “earn your xp”
• A Dante quest where you try and find your way back
• Options where the XP penalty is not there but you are not entirely whole (- to dex or str or something)
• You buy your xp from a broker, but now have to pay it back with interest ;)
• Time served in the House of Ash. Make this a perk of the faction. You become a conscript for X weeks until they release you.

That said all of the above would need serious time investment to build and balance. Until then I’d suggest

• perhaps lowering the death penalty a bit as a sign of good will (we hear you)
• make NPC raises cheaper
• Sell raise dead scrolls from major temples
• Make PC raises a flat 500 diamond or so, because waiting until a pc cleric at lvl 9 has time to help you should be its own reward!!!

[Latoksinned]

@O-louth

Someone suggested an XP debt instead of penalty as a death consequence. I would argue this is a good idea.... in conjunction with the penalty. I suggest the following:

• A flat respawn XP percentage
• You can choose to just raise and pay the full percentage
• You can also choose to split it in half. Only lose half the XP but you have an XP debt before you start earning XP again.

I think this way you can either take the full hit or take a partial hit and "owe" XP before you start earning. This gives death a real consequence and makes it mean something but also greatly reduces the SMACK IN THE FACE of being much lower level for one mistake.

At level 10, I have almost always respawned at 8, at level 9 I have almost always respawned at 7. Instead of losing a level, I'm losing 2 months sometimes of play time and investment in the game. If I could instead lost like a level or half a level, and then have to "pay back" the rest of the XP, it still has a consequence, and makes death slightly less punishing.

At high levels this would be preferable to having to replay a slogging grind to get back to a level that can compete, but it would also prevent you from advancing further in that power goal.

In my opinion it is a win win. We keep death as a real consequence to be avoided and we slightly reduce how infuriating it is at times.

[lunatichigh]

@Latoksinned

I know we want death to be meaningful. I get it. I really, really do. But this game is a huge time investment. It shouldn't be a full time job getting back lost levels, especially when one unlucky crit can kill or one unlucky nat 1 roll on a will save can also kill. I agree that I hate losing time spent playing.

We can also argue that levels don't matter... but they do, to a degree. Why else do we have levels then if only rp matters?

I'd like death to represent consequences of course, but there has to be a way that doesn't kill all the time spent leveling. Maybe when you die you have an xp debt. Or maybe consumables are destroyed. Coins lost. Hell, even armor and weapon durability loss or breakage would be cool. Temporary ability score decrease? Could be annoying, but sure. Better than losing levels and time.

[Cojak81]

Fear of death is what puts people off doing things on the server. They grind the same easy quests then complain they are bored of grinding the same easy quests.I should know, I've done it myself.

The only way to get to level 9 is to not die when you're level 8 and the same with 9 to 10 and given how long the 9-10 grind is, you are statistically unlikely to manage this. I've said it before and ill say it again, Risk vs Reward needs to be addressed. 450gp and 200xp gain vs a loss of months worth of XP on a lot of the harder quests is rubbish. That's why people don't do them. I offered a 2,500 gold kitty for people to come to Deadwell and had 2 volunteers. People don't want to go because it's "not worth it". I am pretty sure there's nothing decent down there loot wise, the gold I offered was a lot to me but split between 4 or 5 PCs you would get more each doing ants and ogres, it would be quicker and less deadly also. If you don't want to bump up the rewards then you're going to have to make death less punishing.

What's the point of having 41 average and hard quests if the same 10-15 are only ever done? Looking at the quest list there's a lot I still haven't done, presumably because they have been deemed "not worth it" by previous players and therefore no one ever does them. What's stopping me getting a group together and doing them? Fear of death! I've not done them before and neither have a lot of players so no meta knowledge and presumably they are harder! If we all die I will also feel bad for causing a TPK instead of just doing ants.

If you removed the death penalty for a week you would see a lot more exploration. People would do different quests and I would finally be able to get people to come to Deadwell with me! It has more impact than I think you realise. People also wouldn't be wanting a reset every 24 hours because there would be enough to safely do in-between resets.

I have a lot of suggestions on how death could be changed.

1. Fixed XP loss for each level, around 50% of the XP gain needed go get to that level. E.g 9,000 XP is needed to go from 9-10 so you lose 4,500 XP if you respawn at level 10. Reduce this to 25% for raise dead. It's still going to hurt a level 10 PC losing 4.5k, it's rare they will have built up enough of a buffer to not delevel but it could happen and why shouldn't it?

This means you can sometimes die in between levels and and still get there eventually. Currently I think even if you're 100xp away from level 10 you're still gonna get bumped back to level 8 on a respawn. But with this new system, if you're over halfway to level 10 you won't lose a level by respawning. Happy days!

2. Lower cost of raises a lot, especially from PC clerics. This whole "raising to grief thing is BS because you just put your fugue robe on and it stops you being raised.

3. Have resurrection not give any XP loss. It's better but it will cost a lot!! No idea how much it costs now but assume it's a lot so leave as is?

4. Love the reincarnation option idea. Have a druid or nature cleric somewhere who will put your soul back into another body. No XP loss but a race and gender would randomly be chosen, could lead to megalolz. Due to the big implications you would need to "opt in" to accept this by equipping something while in Fugue.

5. Final stand. The PC gets to respawn back to their corpse and is essentially in God mode, mega buffed and mega DR with all spell slots/ability use restored. After a minute they die and its permanant. Would not be allowed for PvP. A fine way for a PC to have a heroic end.

6. Second chance. Keep the current penalties but everyone gets an XP loss free respawn once every 10 RL days. Gives everyone a chance to do something crazy risk free. They don't stack however so you can only ever have one at a time and they can't be horded as a resource. Also can't be used for PvP.

[Zolm]

@Latoksinned I would like first of all LESS consequences for dying not MORE thank you very much.

[Mr.Moloch]

@O-louth It would take time and knowledge to build in options. @Cojak81 puts up some other cool options too.

That said, I could script and build all these. I never suggest stuff I couldn't help do myself because I get the work involved.

I also like that if there are a bunch of options, there may be limits on how often you can take them.

[O-louth]

@Mr-Moloch

The last part was my idea as well. The more options, the less likelihood of abuse.

[Mr.Moloch]

@O-louth And just less repetition. I've always been sad that the module has had so many things to do, especially quests, and everyone tends to favor the same small subset. It'd be a shame to have cool possibilities after a death and everyone just takes one.

But that's why Strife's data makes me happy, with data tracking you can figure out what's not being done and put effort into making it more likely to get done.

[Latoksinned]

@lunatichigh

I feel like the less fear of death, the more stupid is done to be honest.... no one creates creative work around the red to dead. Death sucks... I know... but if there is absolutely no fear of death then the whole role playing aspect is gone and we might as well be playing diablo.

@Cojak81
That is a completely separate problem. If something is not worth the risk, the reward needs to be upped or the balance tweaked a bit. I'd suggest we keep this thread to just the death penalty issue and we create separate suggestions for each of these quests that no one will do.

[Cojak81]

@Latoksinned it is relevant, the risk is XP loss due to death, the same with exploring. It's not about the quests, it's about being risk averse due to a high death penalty. Addressing the death system will correct much of this then yes any fine tuning with the rewards can be done later on a quest by quest basis. It's the same issue with exploring dangerous areas. I can't do a suggestion post about a quest I've never done.

[lunatichigh]

@Latoksinned

I'm not saying there shouldn't bea fear of death or lack of it, but rather... a different fearful method to induce said fear. A fear that isn't OOC.

Although, it seems that leveling might not take that much anymore, if xp has been increased, so there may not really be much of an issue anymore? I haven't played in a while.

[EyeOfGruumsh]

Introduce different types of death, from shallow to near-perma for PvE. Then link these to rewards and give PCs choices on just how far they want to try to push things.

This could be linked to specific monsters as well as to areas. You die to some silly badger or a skeleton? That would be a shallow death, perhaps in the range of that proverbial scratch. Make it cost a fraction of the current XP to get back from.

Basically, different monsters or areas (with both IC and OOC warnings) can send you to increasingly deeper levels of the fugue; with increasing costs to return from.

So, losing to the end boss of a DM-event? That might send you pretty far into death, perhaps even with a mechanism that only allows one person back, before that gate closes forever? Perhaps you have to compete with another soul in that fugue to even get the chance?

But the point is: Give it several steps in between, and give people a chance to decide just how invested their characters really are. Overcome that dichotomy between meaningless and crushing. Make those PC-choices matter, and bring on that lure to risk “just a little more“ while simultaneously providing also more casual or death-fearing players with ways to get a taste of things that won’t get too bitter.

[Echo]

@EyeOfGruumsh said in A redressing of the Death Penalty and Cleric Raises:

different types of death

[EyeOfGruumsh]

@Echo
Ok, just different layers of the fugue, in a sense. Or „levels of death“

[Zool]

Some really cool ideas in here.

[Echo]

under discussion

[Voss_]

Neverwinter Nights is a classic game with a niche audience, many of whom are fans of older RPGs that weren’t afraid to challenge and inconvenience players through their mechanics. Servers still running today I feel were mostly created by fans of that older era, when overcoming challenging was difficult by satisfying.

In contrast, most modern games have streamlined their mechanics for the sake of convenience. There are no penalties for dying, checkpoints are abundant, inventories are limitless, and progress is often inevitable. While these changes make games more accessible, they also risk making victories feel shallow and unsatisfying.

"There need to be consequences for death," is often repeated—and mostly refers to taking death seriously in-character, something that's encouraged by death penalties but in the end not something that can be enforced. However it's still preferable to no penalties, just look at how people treat death without penalty in Arelith, barely an inconvenience.

But beyond enforcing RP I feel it's important to have milestones like reaching and retaining level 10, getting the best loot or overcoming the hardest content feel meaningful.

If players can sit at max level without risk or effort, those accomplishments lose their significance. Without the possibility of failure or setbacks, the stakes vanish, and the game world begins to feel like a hollow sandbox. Players will throw themselves at the hardest quests or monsters without tension, turning them into exercises of persistence rather than tests of skill or strategy, and any mystery in the game will soon vanish.

Risk is, after all, what gives a sense of achievement for overcoming a challenge.

---

I think there's some great suggestions in this thread and we'll surely consider them. But regardless of anything a failure state will always be necessary for anything you do to feel meaningful.