Death / Death Penalites / Perma-Death

[Average Estoc User]

Hi!
Since the death penalties on the server are now laughably small, it has started to harm the RP on the server (at least in my opinion) I think it would be a nice change to make them more hardcore and unforgiving.

Why?

Well, as I said, the penalties are basically non-existent, thus many people, especially those who don't care much for roleplay, just go on "YOLO trips" - they either rush on enemies without any preparation (fire/acid for trolls, ranged weapons for mages, Clarity/Invisibility potions, healing supplies etc.) or go fight enemies way over their level and, of course, get themselves kiiled.

But that's not a problem for them - they leave their gold at bank and since they don't lose items on death, they only get richer. And the XP loss after death is nothing compared to XP earned by killing a few enemies.
Normally, that's usual for most MMORPG games, but stuff like that doesn't really fit to the common idea of RP.

What to do about it?

Well, since it's just an idea, I haven't given it that much thought. I will think of something if it actually gets any sort of approval.
But I have a few propositions:

1. Make XP loss after death much more severe. 50% XP to next level or even whole Level loss.
Simple and effective.

2. Possible loss of items? Playing a bandit/scavenger - type character makes no sense since player corpses leave nothing behind but gold (which is mostly left in the bank anyway).
A much more hardcore option would be losing all items on death (but with possibility to pick them up if you get to them before anyone else). However that would force players to stash most of their stuff somewhere and take the best equipment for some serious game. And having a safe storage place isn't common on the server.
Maybe a loss of one random item. Or some sort of a hidden meter that measures how many time's you've died recently. If you get killed too many times within a short period of time (for example, twice per level, or one time a day), you will start losing more and more items.

3. Forced Mark of Destiny - players reaching a certain level (I dunno, 10, 15? So new players don't get destroyed right off the start) automatically get the MoD. This will increase the XP they get, but also force them to be much more cautious.
Many would die before getting to level 30, others would probably settle on level 15~20 and just RP from there on.
That would really change the way the server looks. As for now, there's too many Level 30 players around.
An island filled with lots of max-level OP characters not only would be laughed at in DnD sessions (but then this server is not DnD really), but it's also boring.
Whenver there's some great danger that may destroyed the world - send a group of level 30 badasses
Some player decided to be orignal and wants to play evil character - send a level 30 badass
What if someone dies protecting the world? Welp, he'll just respawn.


Now, there are many arguments against stuff like that, I know it.
"What if someone goes full psycho, creates an OP PVP build and starts killing everybody?"
"What if someone dies because his game crashed or he lagged?"
"What if someone just wants to grind to level 30 without having to worry about perma-death?"

Well, many may disagree with me, but my opinion is that it's an RP server, not Hardcore-power-levelling-minmaxing-server. You're not supposed to create a max level beast that destroys everything. Your character's playthrough should be sort of a little "story" written by you and the people you meet. If your character gets killed, well, that's how their story ended.

Of couse, it's still a game and getting furiously snuggybeared by the its mechanics would be no fun too.
As above, there may be players that will take pleasure in killing others, be it by roleplaying a bandit/serial murderer or by being a try-hard who rapidly grinds some high level and just kills everyone.
The second type would probably get perma-banned for not RPing and ruining others' experience.
The first one, however, would have to be punished IC. But what about the punishment itself?
If there's no perma-death as is, it would seem unfair to kill the character IC because he murdered someone who respawned anyway. Maybe some very long jail sentences? If he's offline, the sentence time will go "slower", so if he's online, he will get released faster...that will probably mean a bunch of AFKing prisoners.


My personal proposition: a modified Mark of Destiny, automatically received at certain level - 10 deaths and you're done.
However, each "life" would be lost not when the character dies, but when he respawns.

This way, if he's raised by a scroll or a spell, he'll only suffer the severe XP loss.
However, I can already imagine people AFKing in the Afterlife for hours, waiting to be respawned. But there's an easy way to counter it.
Resurrecting is very well in the standard, paper DnD, it's like that:
Raise Dead spell can only raise a person who's been dead for no longer than 1 day per caster's level and requires a 5000 gp worth of diamonds.
Ressurection can raise a person who's been dead for no more than 10 years per caster level (might as well remove the time limit) and requires 10000 gp worth of diamonds.
Since the diamonds are extremeley rare on Arelith, I'd replace those with "5000/10000 gp worth in gems" (like alexandrite, greenstone...all those useless gems).
If someone destroys the dead body, it can't be raised, like before.
I think this isn't too hardcore, and it's 100% RP friendly, unlike the broken respawn mechanics we have now.

[Dunshine]

Snuggybeared a part of the sentence there. Keep the colorful descriptions for your RP please.