A redressing of the Death Penalty and Cleric Raises
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under discussion
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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.
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But can we separate out the issue of - "
@Voss_ said in A redressing of the Death Penalty and Cleric Raises:
If players can sit at max level without risk or effort, those accomplishments lose their significance.
from the issue of death entirely sucks on CoA?
Because I totally agree with what you're saying - but still feel the "niche" of your armor falling off in Ghosts and Goblins and you die with the second point of damage you take, wasn't even a fun niche when I was growing up - it was just designed to get another quarter out of me. :)
Even if death just tossed you back to the beginning of your current level, or to 9th level if you die at 10th level. That's a lot less suck, but still with consequences. But "consequences" honestly suck when you're trying to play a casual game; so what about adding fun or interest?
Beyond that, there are ways to make death "meaningful" that encourage roleplay or a character to stick around as 'marked for dead' in the Fugue rather than a "consequence" of some bad die rolls .
What follows is a some brainstorming, but many of the ideas I think came from a "what if there were things to encourage death, give it meaning, and even encourage folks to hang out in the Fugue a little".
Permanent Consequences: Tie a character's death to irreversible story changes, such as altering the world state or shifting alliances, mourners lament their names, which I know happens already, but can it be built on?
Player Reflection: Include moments where the player encounters reminders of the deceased, like memorials in the cemetery with your name on it, items, or ghostly echoes. These could be more tailored than the very generic ones we have now. This fades the longer from the time your PC entered the Fugue, or when in the Fugue, your "ghost" can wander the graveyard or site of your death.
Memory Preservation: Implement journals, psionic crystals, or flashbacks that keep the memory of the character alive, making players reflect on their choices. The old Tyche challenge.
Shared Pool Consequences: Death depletes a communal resource, like faction prestige or shared energy, making survival a collaborative effort. This would work great in a post-apocalyptic story.
Soul Transfer/Transformation: Upon death, the character’s essence transfers into an artifact or environment, altering its properties. If players die on a quest with undead, an undead them appears occasionally, or their corpse is left behind to be looted.
Fugue Raid: When a player dies, PCs have some ways to raid the Fugue to rescue them for a raise. Maybe angels taking advantage of a demon raid of the Fugue, need players to heist out some saint and in return they get their pal back. Successful raids gives the "respawning player" a greatly or entirely reduced XP loss, or even some "death-touched power" for a short time before it fades.
Respawns Matter: When players use, they must choose an allied psychopomp (angel, demon, devil, chosen of a diety) and give up some of their energy to that to respawn. This opens up a new kind of prestige point; that empowers that force in the Material Plane. Sure it sucks I died, but now there are hell hounds patrolling the Red Wood or a shop opened up in my temple for someone whose sacrificed so much to continue to serve Tempus.
Death Powers The longer you stay in the Fugue, the more attuned you get to the power of death. For each day in the Fugue you return with some new power/reward for a brief period of time that makes the bite of dying a little less, the odds of dying again soon a little less.
The Power of Mourning The longer you stay in the Fugue, the less the cost for respawning. If players "mourn" you or hire mourners, the xp cost is further reduced.
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What about a way to have a "Shared XP loss?" This seems like it would suck but hear me out. What if you could (stealing from Moloch) mourn the loss of a player and thus share the cost of raising them. Maybe take on a maximum of 50% of the total XP loss, split between the total members who "pray for their friend."
An example. I lost 7500XP on my last death when I respawned. That knocked me down from a little bit into 8 to all the way down to the start of 7. Lets pretend I had 3 friends who mourned my falling (via some kind of scripted NPC). I could respawn for 3750XP and my friends could split the other half, losing only 1250 each. That is assuming only 3 people would come to mourn my passing. It could also be a selectable script. Like maybe you can choose 10%, 20%, etc up to 50%. For the casual player, this would soften the blow of loss, and if they have friends who are more full time players... 1250 XP or less would have been nothing to them. Made up in less than a day of playtime. Would also encourage more interaction and alliances because if your untimely death comes.... you have people to back you up.
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I really like this idea, actually...
You could turn it from mourning into the creation of a ritual space where people willingly sacrifice of their own essence (xp) to help bring someone back.
This could be a PC only feature if you really wanted it to be, maybe something that could make PC raises more enticing than NPC.
But making it an option for the bringing of a miracle keeps it in context to the game world and makes it feel like something is actually happening rather than 'that person is casting the spell that raises a dead PC'.
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@Dire-Rabbit 'To bring back this lost soul to this earthly tether requires proof that there is room for him yet on this plane, and thus I require of you each that you dedicate part of yourself to him, to see to his restoration with all your will and soul. To restore this cherished colleague or friend, let us gather and see if he will return, if he will respond when called upon and made to see that his time is not yet upon him.'
Or something?
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You could frame it any way you want. That'd be the charm!
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Shared essence in a ritual is a better idea than mine. Also, think about it this way, it encourages you to have more friends and to work more in groups/factions than solo because you can be rescued.
Imagine a level 10 faction leader dies on a quest or to a hard boss and isn't quite willing to retire or it's not a good time to retire.
Level 10 requires 45K Xp. At respawn that drops you to 33,750, making you level 8 with some effort to get even 9 back.
Now.... you have a faction of 5 members who want to bring their friend back. That drops the hurt to 39,375, still level 9 and most of the way back to 10. Each of the 5 faction members only take a hit of 1225, a pittance to a group!
like I said... death is still feared but it can be feared less if you have worked together with others in this world. Not only that, but for some people, they will fear their FRIEND'S death too since they will likely be ponying up some XP to bring them back.
This also, in my opinion, balances the experience between the power gamer (not meant in a bad way) and the casual gamer. You can keep the challenge, the fear of consequence, and the meaningful death, while allowing your power gamers to help take care of the casual gamers and make it more fun for everyone.
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Dnd and video games in general have got "easier" over the years and I think a big reason for that is the people who used to play them don't have endless hours to grind like they used to. I remember playing a game for months that only took half an hour to complete end to end but were so hard you had to keep starting over and over again. I couldn't be bothered with that now as my time is more precious.
Things should be fun and losing months of progress at level 9/10 sucks and every time it happens I seriously consider quitting the server and I'm not the only one. I agree there should be a penalty but at levels 9-10 it's too harsh and for levels 4-7 it's worthless. At level 8 it feels about right! I think a fixed xp penalty amount at each level is the way to go and make it so you are not guaranteed to lose a level every time you die at the higher levels.
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Exactly.
It's pro-social in that it encourages people to keep and maintain friendships and gives people incentives to do interesting stuff with the mechanic all on its own-- enslaving PC's to use as XP batteries, for example. :P
Jokes aside, I think it would be a cool way to handle it in ways that're materially substantial but aren't strictly tied to how deep your purse is.
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We sort of already have a mechanism for possible communal support that feels like it makes sense to me: People pooling some of their own money to pay for a raise or resurrection. You could simply increase the benefits of these options - which mechanically do the same thing. You could also allow something like pre-paid raises though with the HoA or similar. Or you add something like a premium resurrection for double the cost.
A great way to add value to gold.
The advantage I would see in that is that this would not so greatly disadvantage solo-play. Community is good - but there are always the less social, new(!), or solo-players to be considered to avoid too much reliance on buddies (both IC or OOC).
Some of the other suggestions might work great for temporary plots, though. A question is, though, how this would age over persistent use (with xp-sacrifice), and how to avoid exploits, etc.
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Because I totally agree with what you're saying - but still feel the "niche" of your armor falling off in Ghosts and Goblins and you die with the second point of damage you take, wasn't even a fun niche when I was growing up - it was just designed to get another quarter out of me. :)
Yes, there's a reason the more obtuse or annoying mechanics are no longer around. Remember when you dropped your entire pack when you died? However that doesn't mean everything that inconveniences a player is bad. But I recognize that these days there's less time and patience for many more ''hardcore'' mechanics in games.
Personally I prefer the older style of game, and I think many here are the same. You're still playing Neverwinter Nights after all, right?
Even if death just tossed you back to the beginning of your current level, or to 9th level if you die at 10th level. That's a lot less suck, but still with consequences. But "consequences" honestly suck when you're trying to play a casual game; so what about adding fun or interest?
Is it 'fun' to lose your progress in a Dark Souls game? No, but that game is popular because it offers a sense of achievement, it isn't afraid to be challenging. I'm really just parroting myself now, but I stand by my previous points. If there's no penalty for losing, then all challenge is meaningless.
If my character can't de-level below 9 then nothing stops me from respawning until I win. I'll just stay level 9 I don't need 10. You know those dangerous ruins with the rare lore hidden behind scary foes? It won't be rare anymore because there's nothing to give me pause.
If players won't lose their levels there need to be other failure states preventing them from 'cheesing' the game.
I could disable respawning at your corpse so you're forced to run all the way back, or lock you out of a quest when you die. I could enable a growing 'wound' debuff that makes you so weak you're forced to stop playing until it's gone.
These are also not ''fun'' alternatives, but I am of the opinion that if you can't lose you also can't win.
Beyond that, there are ways to make death "meaningful" that encourage roleplay or a character to stick around as 'marked for dead' in the Fugue rather than a "consequence" of some bad die rolls .
What follows is a some brainstorming, but many of the ideas I think came from a "what if there were things to encourage death, give it meaning, and even encourage folks to hang out in the Fugue a little".
Permanent Consequences:
Player Reflection:
Memory Preservation:
Shared Pool Consequences:
Soul Transfer/Transformation:
Fugue Raid:
Respawns Matter:
Death Powers
The Power of Mourning
There's a lot of cool stuff here, and many of them are similar to stuff that's crossed my mind before.
But I'm giving a bit of a blanket response.
They are not appropriate for our setting or narrative.
At least not the current setting of Arabel. There's a lot worth discussing for the next chapter, and we'll be looking at creative suggestions like these.
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I agree and I've been there. It sucks to lose level 9-10 especially on a caster, but not losing levels or barely losing XP isn't an alternative. There needs to be a failure state and something to add risk to attempting the most difficult content.
I am open to alternatives to flat XP loss.
Suggestions like sharing XP penalties are good, because it means the party must retreat to make it happen. Adding consumables that lessen XP penalties for respawning are also fine, because they give value to gold and trading as they're mostly relevant to high levels. In this case you are spending your gold instead of losing a lot of XP.
But you need to spend something for dying and it can't be inconsequential.
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I also like the idea of maybe high level quests having an extremely rare chance to drop raise dead consumables the are less harsh on the XP penalty. If the worry is that people will hoard them.... that is assuming the person who dies isn't the one actually hoarding them, and even if they did..... it LESSENS the pain not eliminates it and it incentivizes doing all those "NOPE" quests that people wont touch currently.
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This may fundamentally be a difference in opinion of the reason why people play this game and what they are hoping to achieve.
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To not derail the discussion (it's how we got to the current situation of death penalty being high and everyone disagreeing on how to fix it)
I just want that penalty lowered as in-between solution.
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In my opinion, the most INFURIATING thing about the whole system is the duration it takes to get back. It can take weeks or - in more extreme cases - months to get back where the character had been before the death. It's off puting. Once I was exploring a cave system and due to three wyverns spawning, my char died. Another case: the damned scorpion at the end of the DM event. I lost well over 10k exp and these two deaths set me back to 8th lvl. Sure, I could grind that back (and with luck, not die in the process), but the question is: what then? The matter is: a split of a second can waste weeks of gathering exp. It took the scorpion one round to send Ithirina to the fugue. And here's the question: why should a 10th lvl char even participate in DM quests, why should a 10th lvl char explore the world, make notes etc. if all of that can waste weeks of the player's IRL time?
I don't want death to have no consequences RP or mechanics-wise. One of the reasons Cormyr and the Dalelands didn't win me over was its absolutely no punishments for death. You woke up with I think 100exp less on your char sheet and that's it. So what CatD represents is another extreme of the spectrum. A good death system should stay away from extremes and it should be well balanced. There SHOULD be consequences for dying, but not that severe.
Ultimately, I think what truly puts people off is what the system implies. Dying on this server means that weeks of your progress are as good as gone. It's far too severe to be enjoyable. I know the premise of the server; death has to have consequences and that's something I agree with. BUT NOT THAT SEVERE. I don't want such a period of time gone due to something which may not even be my fault (for expample, I once died due to a lag on another char)
My solutions? If the system is to stay, at the very least double or even triple XP rewards for quests, don't get of exp for mobs completely or do something which accelerates getting back. Or another proposition: if someone does a quest for the first time, give them more XP for that (maybe 1k, maybe 1.5k and each and every time they do it again - it gets back to normal). It'd greatly incentivise players not to grind the same quest over and over again, but to explore.
Ultimately, players want to immerse themselves, to simply relax a bit with other players or just to have some fun. A guillotine hanging above anyone who dares to leave the Faceless is not fun.
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"Is it 'fun' to lose your progress in a Dark Souls game? No, but that game is popular because it offers a sense of achievement, it isn't afraid to be challenging. I'm really just parroting myself now, but I stand by my previous points. If there's no penalty for losing, then all challenge is meaningless." - but on the other hand, Dark Souls lets you get back on your feat relatively quickly and - more imporatantly - doesn't take what it has already given. I can guarantee that it'd not have as big a fanbase it has now if it forced to basically play all over again after a boss had killed you. I feel that what makes people angry is not the punishment itself, but the way the server is constructed, which basically makes returning to former power a boring, overtly long grind.
There should be consequensces, with that I agree. I believe everyone agrees. But not constructed like that.
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Debt system. 😏
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Only issues is at level 9 and 10 the debt system does nothing. It's a non-issue. Might as well die a 100000 times to finish a quest at level 10 if you just incur a debt.