The Death Penalty and YOU!

[Darkhavien]

Howdy folks,

So I've been playing again and loving it.

Though one thing in particular has made me want to start a discussion, specifically the penalty for death.

Let me first start by saying that I really like the penalty in a PvE sense, I think it's great and encourages people to build whatever they want because they know they can just go gallivanting around with little fear of being harshly penalized by the server mechanics themselves.

However, the one thing that really worries me is the apparent lack of consequence for meaningful, PvP related deaths.

I've been doing some light reading over the past week on old topics that covered this and the general consensus seems to be that the majority of people don't fear death from PvP, but neither do people want a harsher exp penalty/forced perma. Which I completely agree with! Forcing perma-death is never a good thing except in extreme cases.

There is another angle to consider as well. The system (which works splendidly for PvE) finds itself lacking PvP- why is this? Most people are governed by rules that they often grow so used to they become nearly subconscious and incorporated into how they act or play. Currently, there is no such system in place for the PvP dynamic outside of the 24-hour rule, which is more of a soft buffer to prevent conflict monotony- not really a system.

In short:

Small penalties for PvE = good, more exploration and adventure! Huzzah!

Small penalties for PvP = bad, "lol try me m8 ill b back np"

So. What can you do to make a PvP death more meaningful?

Increase the respawn timer in a PvP-specific capacity? Make it so that a player dying to another player won't be back up and about unless they get a raise? Possibly too harsh.

Give players a MoD-type token (which only applies to PvP) that the DM's can refund lives to in the event of griefing/senseless PvP? Possibly too much oversight and would encourage more powerbuilding.


It's a difficult little knot to unravel and one that I've thought on for a significant amount of time.

But, how do you keep the system which works for PvE intact while also introducing the chilling dynamic of death back into the playerbase?

I'd love to hear the thoughts of you, the rest of the player base!

Who knows, maybe we can actually think up something creative and worthwhile.


(Apologies if this isn't the right forum for this, but for some reason it seemed to fit better in general discussion than Q&A and I don't have anything concrete enough to be an actual Suggestion!)

[Convention of Blades]

PvP is a part of this game and it should be as fun as PvE, why so serious?

It's just another event that can lead to fun RP and new discoveries, why should it be treated like a penalty?

[Darkhavien]

PvP is a part of this game and it should be as fun as PvE, why so serious?

It's just another event that can lead to fun RP and new discoveries, why should it be treated like a penalty?

That's an excellent question. One I thought about myself for a while!

Keep in mind that I don't think that anything is currently bad or broken, I'm just sharing my thoughts on what I feel is lacking from the traditional DnD experience.

Overall this server is a gem, but how much stronger could the narrative be with an extra dash of zesty tension that meaningful death can bring?


I'd like to once again mention that I'll still be perfectly happy even if nothing changes, because at the end of the day we're all here to have fun and RP!

[Griefmaker]

Overall this server is a gem, but how much stronger could the narrative be with an extra dash of zesty tension that meaningful death can bring?

If players are not RPing death meaningfully, then it does not matter how much "pain" the devs give death. The devs could make PvP death so strict that a character is set back to level 3 and it would change nothing with RPing death, but would change dramatically how players OOCly act, react, and play on this server.

Basically, it would be terrible. I had a list I wrote up about why it would be, but I know that many misunderstand satire, so erased it in order to reduce angst. Fortunately, there are still some servers out there with a small core of players which have strict death penalties. After 13 years of playing NWN and 10+ on Arelith, I have decided one thing in regard to strict death penalties:

Arelith thankfully does not have that!

[gilescorey]

I don't know. There's a surprising lack of large scale conflict, lately, and I feel like harsher penalties for PvP will dissuade it even more.
Of course, you can argue that there are other ways of conflict that aren't PvP, but it is certainly one of the more visual ways to go about it.

[Darkhavien]

Overall this server is a gem, but how much stronger could the narrative be with an extra dash of zesty tension that meaningful death can bring?

If players are not RPing death meaningfully, then it does not matter how much "pain" the devs give death. The devs could make PvP death so strict that a character is set back to level 3 and it would change nothing with RPing death, but would change dramatically how players OOCly act, react, and play on this server.

Basically, it would be terrible. I had a list I wrote up about why it would be, but I know that many misunderstand satire, so erased it in order to reduce angst. Fortunately, there are still some servers out there with a small core of players which have strict death penalties. After 13 years of playing NWN and 10+ on Arelith, I have decided one thing in regard to strict death penalties:

Arelith thankfully does not have that!

Thanks for responding!

If nothing else, I wanted to get an understanding of the current thoughts of my fellow players on this subject.

Because, overall, if everyone is in favor of and are in fact having more fun with it than an alternative then is there anything truly wrong?

On that same stream of thought; there's nothing wrong with a healthy discussion stirred up by a difference in opinion, either!

[Griefmaker]

I actually completely agree and personally would love it for there to be a way to make death something to be feared. The problem is there really is no mechanical way to do that in a game. It all has to come from the player and translate into the character.

But discussions are always good!

[Irongron]

Oh, this really is something I could talk at such length about.

It was Septire and I that were responsible for this change, and it came from a number of factors, chiefly, for me, risk averse adventuring, where I almost entirely stopped going on dungeon crawls because they were universally boring and without any danger.

As I started adjusting creatures in the module, chielfy adding those rare, and often deadly encounters, I often heard people complaining that they DIED while adventuring.

For me this is where we stopped being an AD&D game, and more of a group story-telling circle, where people were increasingly uncomfortable if anything unexpected happening. Terms like 'daily grind' were common, where it was far more doing x amount of work for y amount of gold.

Of course it didnt end with death, I would have removed the -guard function also if the other team members hadn't reined me in.

Personally I really enjoy the thrill of a dungeon crawl or gone wrong, or attempting somewhere far more difficult than the party should really be tackling.

But it wasn't fun, when it set one's XP back by weeks or months, especially for more casual players like myself. Most people simply weren't going anywhere where there was any risk of death. And I felt like if I had to tail a party around the Wharftown Boys one more time, while they casually discussed topics like they were working in a burger bar, rather than facing potential death I would delete this game from my computer forever.

So, in regards to dungeons crawls, I think Darkhavian is spot on.

Now for PvP, that's another, uglier story. There was so much bad feeling around PvP conflict, because of the damage it did sure, but also because it was so often by an OOC motivation to take people's levels away.

It was all about the power to always win, because the risks of loss were so great. If you were going to play any kind of dangerous character, good or evil you just HAD TO be powerbuilt.

DMs were constantly facing reports about it, very tiresome discussions about 'bashing' (I read far too many 'let's bash them back to level 3' comments.)

I know the change wasn't popular with everyone, but I am just so happy to have not endured any 'bash' topics or discussions at all in 2016, and neither to have encountered that often well-meaning but horrible process of 'OOC Raises', itself an action I had to spell out time and time again was against the rules in an IC server.

Those that know me, or remember many of my PCs will know I wasn't shy of PvP, and when done well can add so very much tension and flavour to our server. I was one of those PvPers who were sometimes disliked, on a personal level, because the climate was such that anyone playing an evil character PvPing their enemies just had to be a bad person.

I know I've not exactly been operating with mass support in many of my actions, but I am so very happy that death was changed.

I'm not saying it is perfect now, and I saw some discussions about this during my time away, but it is better than it was.

I don't hold with the 'people need to take death seriously!' arguement, in a world where the raising of the dead is commonplace, and gods most definitely exist. Sure we're an RP server, but that isn't all that we are. This is an AD&D environment, and has to also function as a adventure game, and so many changes, be it to death, overpowered spawns, familars and classes, as well as dungeon work has, for myself at least, been done to that end.

At least that's my philosophy for Arelith, and I think with input from DM Noxt also, ending policies such as 'punish players if they're not RPing when alone', and Peppermint, taking a long hard look at how certain mechanics have been introduced, have done much to move us towards a 'game' environment, rather than being perceived as an elitist RP environment, where all that really matters is the strength of one's emotes.

[Darkhavien]

I appreciate you taking the time to write up a synopsis of the 'why' behind the change, Irongron.

It's easy to forget sometimes that the culture of a server very much influences the policies and rules it enforces or changes- there is never really a 'formula' you can plug in that'll be the 'end all be all' system.

The responses I've received from all of you have been enlightening and I'd like to take the time to thank you for putting so much thought into your explanations.

Overall (As always!) I suppose it's down to us as individuals to judge ourselves and ask what we really want out of a story and our characters. As well as taking putting ourselves in the shoes of others and thinking: "Would this be fun for me to experience?"

[ace.m.v]

I enjoy the PvE death penalty being lenient as it does seem to encourage people to take risks and go out adventuring. On the other hand, I was told that this applies to PvP deaths as well, which I find a bit odd. While I don't see a need for losing more XP or anything like that for PvP deaths, I do think it's a disservice to story-telling if someone can remember the details of their death outside of a 24 hour grace period (I'm new to the server, so correct me if I'm wrong about this particular rule).

Death, be it from a goblin spawn or a PC, should be a traumatic event no matter how relatively commonplace raise dead spells are in the Forgotten Realms (one thing to bear in mind here is that adventurers are a whole different breed of animal than the average commoner or even noble; most people in the Realms stay dead when they die).

I don't think enforcing a "you don't know the details of how you died/who killed you" rule will necessarily result in a more serious (I hesitate to say better as that's a matter of perspective) outlook on death, but it certainly wouldn't detract from it. In the worst case scenario PCs will shrug and go about their business with a few days blanked out in their memories. On the other hand it can be quite interesting to see someone come to terms with the fact that they died, and regardless of whether they're alive now or not there's a part of their being (memory, soul, call it what you will) that now appears to have been taken from them. Forever.

[Irongron]

I think roleplaying an appropriate response to violence and death (be it trauma or shame) can only really be rewarded with RP rating. Mechanical penalties didn't make people do so before, any more than it does now.

It does go the other way too. About 10 years ago I played a gladiator, whose description noted that in a world where death can be reversed, a gladiator can come back many times, and that the mark of many fatal wounds were shown on his body. He reacted in a very mundane way to being slain, which was fortunate really, as he was a pure fighter, focused on PvP, so most adventures I went on tended to end with his death (Much the same is true for the character I play today).

But when it comes to real conflict between factions,settlements and players is it really a bad thing that who is best at PvP no longer decides the eventual outcome?

Conflict can be decisively won by gaining influence, supporters, and outwitting one's opponents in a more lasting and concrete way than simply having the strongest build.

There are characters out there, who while they excel at PvP are exiled from nearly everywhere, universally derided, and have little to show for their skill other than a severely tarnished reputation.

PvP will always be a large part of conflcit, but it isn't the entirity of it. Winning friends and influencing people is far better route to success than pulling out a time-stop scroll, then killing and bashing one's opponenents.

I don't personally see that stricter penalties for PvP loss would do anything other than encourage an arena stye mentality.

[The Rambling Midget]

The majority of players are here to have fun.

Each individual player can only control their own actions, and when they try to force others to play the game a specific way, it just causes both parties to have less fun. Changing the rules can force compliance, but only truly to the letter, and those who aren't already open to the reasons behind a rule change will most often follow it only as far as they have to in order to avoid getting in trouble.

So, the only way to make a real change as an individual, as far as taking death seriously, is to lead by example. Be the change you want to see. When others see that they can have as much dying as they do living, they may embrace the idea and try it for themselves. It won't happen overnight, though. We've seen in the past that map areas, mechanics, and policies can change over time, but it usually happens slowly and in line with player/character actions, rather than direct requests on the forums.

The best social changes are the ones that don't require a rule or policy change, and are followed voluntarily by the players, because they make the game more enjoyable. Because we're mostly here to have fun.

[Shadofury]

there was an old rule years before d20 was introduced that made your base con score upon creating your char as the number of times your body can take the strain and stress of being raised from death.

there was another server that used something similar but was closer to our mod with soul strands.

But the way it was handled might be something our code gods could look into for pvp death. when you die to pvp you roll a percentage and as long as you make the roll you get raised nothing out of the ordinary. the roll dc to beat is your char level so even at max you would have a 70 percent chance to make the roll.
If however you fail the roll you lose one side point of your bodies ability to be brought back.

say you start with a 12 con and gift takes you to 14 then you have to fail that roll 14 times to not be able to be brought back or spawn from pvp death. some may say this is just a fancy mod, but im not talking every type death, only pvp death and the script fires to trigger the roll.

And as i put above, even lvl 30s have a 70 percent chance to pass the roll.

Just a thought to add the oh crap back to pvp death

[Durvayas]

On the one hand, death needs to be a risk.

On the other hand, if you make it a risk, like FL's PvP MoD, you give the darker aspect of the playerbase an excuse to lowkey grief someone, because they can now eliminate a PC from the game mechanically.

I think the 'your character is now almost useless for two hours' after death penalty works. At best, people RP their weakened state or avoid adventuring while they recover, so there is more settlement RP going on from those people. Otherwise, they tend to log and play another PC, which isn't a problem either. In PvP situations, it tends to mean the person who killed X isn't about to see X walk around a corner in the same city they both live in 5 minutes after removing their head.

[dicerollings]

Each individual player can only control their own actions, and when they try to force others to play the game a specific way, it just causes both parties to have less fun.

This.
Also, not to be mean or anything, but we just had this thread and it basically came down to, well.

'You can't force people to play your way, because they'll quit, but you can lead by example' vs 'I want people to play the way I want them to regardless of if it's fun for them, for my own 'realism' in this fantasy game.'

There you go. There's the whole argument. Add a sprinkling of 'Forgotten realms is a setting where death and resurrection is relatively commonplace, at least for adventurers,' and 'servers with big respawn penalties exist if you want them, but they've got a quarter of Arelith's players, at most, for some reason' and that's the whole thread summed up for the next week.

[kittenblackfriends]

I'm a player who usually avoids mechanical PvP. I've stated this to my allies several times. The way I see it, no perma death means that I can be comfortable dying, but I still play the same way because I have to politic and break their will to fight. It actually makes it more fun for me because it lets me know I can step out of my comfort zone if I want, but the long run is still how I usually play. And it means I don't need to power build a CON barbarian with cheese saves to survive conflict.

[Septire]

If players are not RPing death meaningfully, then it does not matter how much "pain" the devs give death. The devs could make PvP death so strict that a character is set back to level 3 and it would change nothing with RPing death, but would change dramatically how players OOCly act, react, and play on this server.

For me, it ultimately came down to this question:

How do mechanics influence roleplay, with respect to death and respawning? (not theoretically, but actually)

Based on what I was observing over many years, for players who were serious about doing things their way, XP penalties were nothing more than a speed-bump. The size and impact of that speed-bump was largely dependent on the type of player it affected. For powerbuilders/hardcore grinders, or players already at around 465000 XP (435000 needed for level 30), they had a nice 30k XP padding to play around with. For those not yet at that XP ceiling, why suffer the loss of XP when you could just ignore the RP happening, and silent grind to 30? You are more likely to change the RP in a way that is desirable for you if you have the levels and you have the build to make it happen, right? At least, this is what was going through such players' minds.

It was when I really started looking at it, and all the corpse-bashing aversion, and the expectation of OOC/"RP" raises for the purposes of dodging the XP penalty (because the players involved were RPing, should RP have an XP price tag? Some players believe the answer is No) that I started to realize a few things:

1. XP penalties set back casual players, and do not significantly hinder those players where XP is not as big of an issue.

2. The respawn penalty can be used as a vector to bully players. Bash them back to level 3. Nothing more needs to be said here, I think the statement speaks volumes.

3. The cost of respawning should not put players off from playing the game (ie: losing a week's worth of "work")

4. Corpse-bashing was seen as taboo, a good reason to file a report with the DMs "just in case" to ensure everything was kosher. Similarly, some players went off the rails in tells when they learned they would not be getting an OOC/"RP" raise.

5. Some players would ignore conflict until they were sufficient level to make an impact. There was a small amount of low-level hostilities, but consider this: You could pickpocket someone with your level 6 rogue, or you could try to be a highwayman as your level 7 fighter. Until a level 30 guard shows up, tells you to desist, then either jails you or exiles you. The risk is far too great for the meagre reward it would typically offer. Similarly, getting around exiles requires a substantial bluff or perform skill to disguise past the NPC guards, so epic levels (still largely is, unfortunately) the only safe bet to facilitate this sort of RP.

And probably the most important thing I realized from all this:

No matter what the penalty might be, if a player is given the choice to ignore the consequences, there will be players who ignore the consequences. No mechanical system is going to be able to force a certain style of RP, some players will always look for exceptions or excuses why their character is above consequence.

Perhaps the outlook is a bleak one, but the way I saw it, the system ought to have been adjusted to remedy these issues:

1. Don't set back casual players or players who have limited time to play. Grinders are gonna grind either way, and there's not much that's really going to stop them if they are determined.

2. Corpse-bashing should not create vitriolic OOC feels. It's a part of the game.

3. Death, respawning, waiting 5 minutes, and then the drains are going to create a draw on XP for those players grinding. Rather than respawning right away and powergrinding the XP they lost (to sweep the death under the rug as fast as possible and feel better about the whole thing), don't punish their existing pool but instead affect future XP gain for a little while. Let the player take a breather, log out if they want, or stick around with the drains.

4. OOC-raises or telling friends OOC where they died to come get raised would have limited gains. Sure, it likely still happens but I like to think the risk of getting caught doing that now discourages it, the reward is a couple of hours of drains, not XP.

5. Level 30s should feel the effects of death, and this is especially so for those players who grinded to 30 fast and hard to engage in epic-level PvP and/or force their planned RP (ego) on others. For such players, I would argue the old system had even less meaning to them than the new system does. With the drains, you can't ignore the respawn and act as though nothing happened at all. Your character is drained, you are inconvenienced for a while. The player might stick around and RP, or they might switch to an alt.

6. Encourage low and mid level conflict without the looming XP hit being held over their head should they "fail" in their objectives. Failure is just a part of the learning process, I don't think being heavy-handed with punishments for failure is going to encourage anybody to try anything new or to try to innovate. That's what we want more of, right? The low-mid level conflict, it should not be gated to epic characters only. Someone who is still around level 10 should be able to get their thieves guild off the ground without too much worry of being completely screwed by a band of level 30s who are "doing the right thing", right? Or, should level 30s have significant sway in determining low-level RP and be able to crash the parties as they see fit? Is it fair? From a respawn penalty standpoint, they should not suffer significantly should something like this happen, but I'd like to see more ways low and mid levels can get things going on the whole.

Is this new respawn system perfect? No. There's still players who feel that death should have great meaning, or the respawn system should treat PvP and PvE deaths differently. I'm just going to reiterate: I don't believe that any mechanical system is going to cause players to suddenly start RPing consequences if they were not RPing them before. If there is a significant threat offered by respawning, some players are either going to: A) use it against other players or B) find ways to prevent the risk (powerbuilding, avoiding conflict, employing gank strategies on others with minimal RP before PvP, etc etc)

We're open to suggestions, of course, but I think players are always going to have opinions on whether death and respawning should be serious, or if it should be trivial. Different players are going to have different ideas on how hardcore Arelith ought to be. Just ask yourselves what I asked myself: Is a heavy-handed, or light-handed, mechanical system really going to change the RP? Or, is it ultimately the individual decisions to the players involved to decide how the death/respawn is going to impact their own RP?

I believe it's the responsibility of the player to RP their losses and their deaths. The culture of the server is only going to be as good as the players allow it to be. If each player makes the choice to RP fairly with others, let others have a win from time to time, then I believe such a change would do much more than a script could.

tl;dr: It's the mindset of the players, the mechanical systems can't force players to RP more or less should they choose not to.

[Irongron]

I can't praise Septire's above post highly enough; he really did cover so much of the reasoning that led us both to this decision last year. I am still so glad that we did that, and still grateful to Mithreas, then the overlord ofArelith, for approving it.

[Darkhavien]

Honestly, that's good enough for me.

I'm happy enough as is and Septire put up as much of a /thread post as we'll probably see.

Thank you all for an insight into your thoughts and feelings on the matter. I definitely loved reading that the majority seemed to stick to the 'look to yourself, not to others' mentality.

[Durvayas]

The only way i can see the death penalty being improved is if the actual penalty at the moment of death was removed, and instead a script put in place that entirely stops you gaining exp after respawning for a time based on your level. In an ideal system, death mechanics are only inhibitors of progress, rather than a vessel that delivers a setback in exp gain.

Aside that detail, I think it is at an ideal form now.

[Nitro]

The only way i can see the death penalty being improved is if the actual penalty at the moment of death was removed, and instead a script put in place that entirely stops you gaining exp after respawning for a time based on your level. In an ideal system, death mechanics are only inhibitors of progress, rather than a vessel that delivers a setback in exp gain.

Aside that detail, I think it is at an ideal form now.

That just seems like it'd make people even less likely to go out and do stuff while the death debuff is on them. I know for sure I wouldn't want to go out and adventure if my XP was locked just because I died to something recently.

[Durvayas]

The penalty as is encourages peoplw to stay in, since they are effectively cursed.

With this active, you could certainly go out and adventure because it wouldn't effect your stats nor your loot.

[Ork]

I want to use this opportunity to thank you devs & OP. This is an example of a thread that didn't divulge into a flame war & we were able to see some very thought out reasonings for the change to begin with.

Thank you Irongron&CO for all the work you've put in. Arelith is a lot of fun, and with these frequent updates and additions, the game has never been fresher.

[TheVandals]

don't know. There's a surprising lack of large scale conflict, lately, and I feel like harsher penalties for PvP will dissuade it even more.

My view here is precisely the opposite. If pvp settles nothing, why bother? And in my opinion it'll fail to settle anything if the consequences remain negligible. I love light penalties for death PvE because it permits people to be more adventurous, but for the reason just mentioned, I think low penalties for pvp aren't a good thing.

I /do/ agree completely with the notion that high XP penalties for PVP are bad for the server. I think you could fiddle with the duration and magnitude of the stat drains when killed by pvp to increase the consequences of getting pvp'ed such that the penalty for dying would be more severe, but not /too/ severe. Interestingly, this would be especially beneficial to casual players since they'll have more down-time to allow the penalties to tick away (in theory, anyway.)

Off the cuff, you could double the duration of the stat drains but decrease the magnitude of them, such that players will still be able to hunt and play, but they'll have to wrestle with the consequences of their loss a little longer.

[Stath]

Xp penalties for getting killed in pvp is lame. It just alienates people from it more than they already are, when it can actually be the result of or contribute to good story telling. A subdual system would be kind of cool, it would help avoid the awkwardness of seeing someone decapitated and then walking around again.