How to Implement Save or Dies in a Balanced D&D System

[deaddmwalking]

Have you ever straight up killed a defenseless opponent because you thought it was possible that they might sneak up and kill a party member while they were sleeping? One of those opponents that is 'too dangerous to let live'? Would you have felt compelled to do so if you KNEW that you COULDN'T get murdered in your sleep - that you had 'plot armor' against such a death? And if that doesn't apply to you, do you think it might to others?

That's dumb. Of course I would still kill them. My character doesn't know he can only die during the opt-in killing sessions.

Your actions are not emulative of many genres of fiction, which isn't necessarily the goal, but could be.

It appears that the criticisms of the death flag are incoherent - some people are saying that it can't work because of a bullshit minor bonus and some people saying it can't work because the bonus is too good and some characters will be in awesome mode all the time and others won't be. To me that looks like it's just a question of pricing - making the bonus GOOD ENOUGH without making it overwhelming. If everyone uses it all the time the bonus is too good; if nobody uses it the bonus is not good enough.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

There is no price to me, though. It's just free power. I'll take it 99% of the time. I'm not afraid to fictionally die.

[Kaelik]

If some people say "+1 is too powerful." And some people say "+100 isn't powerful enough."

It is not true that if you just split the baby both sides will be happy with your well constructed compromise solution.

You got confused because you didn't understand the actual issues people are raising, and thought it was a math problem when it is conceptual.

[Omegonthesane]

Have you ever straight up killed a defenseless opponent because you thought it was possible that they might sneak up and kill a party member while they were sleeping? One of those opponents that is 'too dangerous to let live'? Would you have felt compelled to do so if you KNEW that you COULDN'T get murdered in your sleep - that you had 'plot armor' against such a death? And if that doesn't apply to you, do you think it might to others?

That's dumb. Of course I would still kill them. My character doesn't know he can only die during the opt-in killing sessions.

Your actions are not emulative of many genres of fiction, which isn't necessarily the goal, but could be.

It appears that the criticisms of the death flag are incoherent - some people are saying that it can't work because of a bullshit minor bonus and some people saying it can't work because the bonus is too good and some characters will be in awesome mode all the time and others won't be. To me that looks like it's just a question of pricing - making the bonus GOOD ENOUGH without making it overwhelming. If everyone uses it all the time the bonus is too good; if nobody uses it the bonus is not good enough.

My issue is not that a +3 is too small, nor that a +300 is too large.

My issue is that character death being on or off the table should not be a decision that is directly tied to a dissociated mechanical bonus or penalty, no matter the size.

Character death says something about the tone of the campaign, and typically means going through the procedures of character generation. It ends up being a strictly out-of-game penalty for what amounts to a narrative decision.

As for your example of an opponent sneaking up and killing a party member in their sleep, even if I explicitly keep my death flag superglued to the floor, my assumption would be that they might sneak up and seriously injure a party member, possibly sabotage and/or steal our means of transit, and then run off with something important and portable that we were carrying, whether that's a plot coupon or a magic sword. So I have every incentive to make sure that doesn't happen, and changing the defeat result solution space to exclude character death does not change that, so if I can't keep the prisoner under watch all night then of course I'm executing him.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

If you don't understand why a specific number isn't the problem and think you can find the sweet spot of some possible number.

Why are you excluding my counter proposal of a NEGATIVE death flag modifier. It meets all your goals only better!

I mean. It probably would. If you would answer any clear coherent questions about what your goals are.

[deaddmwalking]

There is no price to me, though. It's just free power. I'll take it 99% of the time. I'm not afraid to fictionally die.

And why is that a problem? It appears that you're presuming both that the amount of power is sufficiently great as to make the party unbalanced if you choose to take on this flag and the other party members don't. Getting an artifact sword also tends to make one character more powerful than another and it happens in games with a fair amount of frequency. If power is 'constrained' and you're near the top of the band and the rest of the party is toward the middle or bottom, the game is working as expected; especially if the other players can 'power up' when they feel it is warranted. If the system is designed to include the 'power up', it doesn't really seem like a problem.

If some people say "+1 is too powerful." And some people say "+100 isn't powerful enough."

It is not true that if you just split the baby both sides will be happy with your well constructed compromise solution.

You got confused because you didn't understand the actual issues people are raising, and thought it was a math problem when it is conceptual.

I understand that you can't make people with mutually exclusive desires happy. It seemed that people were saying +1 isn't powerful enough and +300 is too powerful when obviously there is a place in the middle where the balance could be right. Can you help me understand who is arguing that +1 'is too powerful'? Maybe I'm blind, but I still don't see it after reading through the posts after Tussock suggested it. I fail to understand how having a defensive ability that you can turn on/off for greater combat power is conceptually different from Reckless Strike.

My issue is not that a +3 is too small, nor that a +300 is too large.

My issue is that character death being on or off the table should not be a decision that is directly tied to a dissociated mechanical bonus or penalty, no matter the size.

Thematically, can you imagine a situation where you are generally immune to death (but not severe injury) unless you enter an emotional rage where your attacks are wild and powerful but you spend less effort on defending yourself? In media we seem to see something like that fairly often. Of course, that presumes that we want to avoid death without any narrative weight. If you're playing a WWI game and you keep getting killed because of snipers or random artillery shells (real ways to die) the game might not deal with the 'dramatic parts' of going over the edge of the trench and charging the enemy. In such a game, achieving a 'Wonder Woman' style heroic moment might only be possible while your death-flag is raised. Rather than 'bigger numbers' it unlocks movement powers. Ignoring the rough terrain, reducing the amount of time that the enemies have to target you with withering machine gun fire, might be a worthwhile tactic some of the time. It's possible to tie the bonus to narrative play, meaning it doesn't have to be strictly 'dissociated'. Just as the 'avatar state' represents a specific emotional state, so, too, could 'raising the death flag'.

Character death says something about the tone of the campaign, and typically means going through the procedures of character generation. It ends up being a strictly out-of-game penalty for what amounts to a narrative decision.

I disagree. Making a new character out of game isn't the only cost of losing a character you've been playing for a significant amount of time. Many games/characters have established relationships in the setting, and a new character, even if mechanically equivalent won't have those established relationships. Incorporating a different backstory; different motivations and character goals have an impact on the in-game activities, too. Essentially, character death has narrative consequences - which seems fitting if you're making a narrative decision.

As for your example of an opponent sneaking up and killing a party member in their sleep, even if I explicitly keep my death flag superglued to the floor, my assumption would be that they might sneak up and seriously injure a party member, possibly sabotage and/or steal our means of transit, and then run off with something important and portable that we were carrying, whether that's a plot coupon or a magic sword. So I have every incentive to make sure that doesn't happen, and changing the defeat result solution space to exclude character death does not change that, so if I can't keep the prisoner under watch all night then of course I'm executing him.

Sure, you have lots of good reasons to kill someone. But some people find killing helpless people distasteful. If the worst that happens is you have to go chase down a threat to recover your plot coupon (creating an adventure seed for the GM), that's not such a bad thing. Everyone agrees that Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie in part because the 'good guys' suffer multiple setbacks. Surviving Act II to set up the PCs 'success' in Act III is supposed to be the point. Setting up a situation where the protagonist(s) can face a foe; be defeated; seek out a power-up; confront that foe again and successfully defeat it is a high-level summary of just about every literary/cinematic example of adventure stories. A potential problem with D&D is that defeat usually means character death - there is no Act 2, there is no setback, it's just PCs overcoming increasingly difficult challenges. Being certain to avoid death doesn't mean that you have to play any differently - you can still kill everyone that you want - but it does mean that you CAN play differently if you choose to and you've got 'plot armor' to avoid the most dire consequences.

If you don't understand why a specific number isn't the problem and think you can find the sweet spot of some possible number.

Why are you excluding my counter proposal of a NEGATIVE death flag modifier. It meets all your goals only better!

I mean. It probably would. If you would answer any clear coherent questions about what your goals are.

If you want to encourage character death, lets ACTUALLY encourage character death for drama and high stakes play. When the death flag is raised characters become vulnerable to death and the only numeric changes they get in return are significant across the board penalties on all their defenses.

Better than that, lets run it in the "are they incompatible view points" mode, and your flag is raised or not based on the "type of player you are" irreversibly and forever and not by the type of player you claim you are in any given encounter.

I mean. At least it makes character death not just possible but actually more likely (I mean is this a mechanic trying to make it happen or not?). And the only players experiencing it are the hardcore edgy ok with character death ones that want to. Right?

I mean it is in the end just the death flag proposal but even better at proposed goals right?

I don't think that supports the goals of a death flag. The point of a death-flag is not to encourage character death. Character death already exists as a consequence of every D&D edition that exists. Character death exists as a possible consequence in most other RPGs as well. Some systems even offer a chance for character death in character creation. While I can't claim to be aware of EVERY RPG, the only one that I know of that doesn't permit character death without the player agreeing by rule is Coyote & Crow.

In standard D&D (any edition) characters can die and there is not much they can do about it - if someone hits you with finger of death and you fail your save, you die. In standard Coyote & Crow someone throws you off a barge flying at 20,000 feet and you crash into the ground, you live (unless you don't want to).

I can imagine a situation where you want to prevent character death outside of 'significant' encounters. As the GM you could determine what counts as significant versus insignificant encounters. Going through the goblin-mine and fighting a half-dozen groups of 4-5 goblins wouldn't, but confronting the orog who rules them with his 2-orc bodyguards might. But GM fiat is never perfect - if a player is 'killable' and didn't think that the narrative stakes were 'sufficiently high', there's a chance for some hurt feelings. An encounter that is difficult (and has at least a significant probability to end in party defeat, but not death with the 'death-flag' lowered) would be more likely to end in party victory if they gained a power-up. Giving them an activated ability to gain power that requires them to 'opt in' to potential significant negative consequences (character death). The goal is not, and should not, that players always die when they raise their death flag. Instead the goal is to give the encounter significantly more narrative weight. Players MUST REALIZE that this is a narratively significant encounter when they put 'death on the line'. It becomes a question of whether immediate victory is more important than possible defeat and regrouping. Especially in the case of 'puzzle monsters' charging in with your death-flag raised is a poor tactical choice - you might not have a meaningful benefit in this encounter and therefore you're dying and replacing your characters while your more cautious allies determine the threat level, confirm that they could win and then activate the power when they realize doing so makes victory more likely.

Consider another situation - like the Man in Black you're confronted with multiple enemies with crossbows trained on you. You have at least two high-level opponents that you're unlikely to be able to defeat. You've got a vulnerable non-combat NPC that you're conducting through an escort mission. In D&D, why would you ever surrender? Becoming helpless means that they could kill you at their leisure (and they have compelling reasons to do so since your survival remains a threat to them).

The point of a Death Flag is to incentive the PC playing the Man-in-Black to surrender (or fight it out but not die) allowing the game to continue. In standard D&D, the death and dying rules incentivize making each combat a fight to the death. Death Flag creates an incentive to at least be willing to accept defeat with the presumption that avoiding character death is something that's important to you. Yes, it is based on narrative conventions (Dr. Evil puts Austin Powers in a death-trap with laser-wielding sharks rather than wasting him with a .45 ACP), but it codifies those conventions to allow players more choice.

It may not be right for EVERY campaign, but I fail to see how this is automatically 'always bad'. I feel like people have a reflexive reaction to want to say that Tussock is always wrong and he suggested it - personally I think that considering options to give players more ownership of character death is generally a good thing. I understand how players might NEVER want to die, and how you might want to encourage them to consider it in some cases, and providing an incentive to make it a possibility can do that.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I don't think that supports the goals of a death flag. The point of a death-flag is not to encourage character death.

Bullshit.

That is not what it is presented as at all. That's you bending into a pretzel in post hock justification.

Some systems even offer a chance for character death in character creation.

OK, when I read you wandering off to such incredibly inconsequential and offensively edge case tangents for no reason I KNOW you are grasping for straws. What do YOU think you are doing when you write stuff like that? Your word count is too high already, restrain yourself.

I can imagine a situation where you want to prevent character death outside of 'significant' encounters.

Could you? Well that's just GREAT. You know why. Because that's exactly what death flags was sold as a mechanic to encourage character deaths in specifically the harder more important encounters that matter to make them more dramatic.

You don't want to get pinned down to that, because death flags as presented are not at all good at it.

So bad that actually if used as originally intended they actually DO for instance shake out in net penalties/bonuses such that actually in encounters that were supposed to be used with with vanilla death flags the across the board difficulty bonus to opponents and the player death flag bonus only to offensive stats IS functionally the same as a defense penalty I suggested and that you have dismissed (with irrelevant waffle).

But you didn't notice that functional quirk, or any functional quirk because you are obsessing beyond the mere function of the game with irrational justifications about "narrative weight" and redefining which if any "encounters that matter" could possibly make this make sense to you instead of I don't know, sticking with the fairly obvious original definition.

[MGuy]

The conceptual difference lies in the fact that you're trading 'not numbers' for numbers. It really starts there but I'm not going to repeat myself just for you to continue to ignore the most obvious truth that multiple people have now pointed out. What has me confused now is how you think hiding a bonus behind enabling yourself to die isn't encouraging people to die. If you ever answered the question "how is this better than just not allowing people to die at all unless they want to?" It would explain to me how far in crazy town you b are but instead you've been repeating the same talking points with longer and longer points without addressing the core criticisms you're receiving.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't think that supports the goals of a death flag. The point of a death-flag is not to encourage character death.

Bullshit.

That is not what it is presented as at all. That's you bending into a pretzel in post hock justification.

This is where this came up:

Someone had a thing with the death flag.

Where, nothing can kill your PC, because they're a PC, unless you think it's dramatically appropriate to risk that. Boss NPCs can have the same trick.

Then, get like +4 to hit and damage and +1 attack, or -4 to opponent saves, or whatever, but you earn that by risking death, raising your death flag, so now the standard game mechanics can just kill you, for this one scene.

I don't see how that is supposed to encourage character death. It reduces it by making you invulnerable some of the time. When you're not invulnerable, you're also more powerful.

The conceptual difference lies in the fact that you're trading 'not numbers' for numbers. It really starts there but I'm not going to repeat myself just for you to continue to ignore the most obvious truth that multiple people have now pointed out. What has me confused now is how you think hiding a bonus behind enabling yourself to die isn't encouraging people to die. If you ever answered the question "how is this better than just not allowing people to die at all unless they want to?" It would explain to me how far in crazy town you b are but instead you've been repeating the same talking points with longer and longer points without addressing the core criticisms you're receiving.

Being willing to die is not the same as wanting to die.

In standard D&D, you're subject to death as a normal condition of the game. In between 'no death ever' and 'you choose when you die' there's a space for 'avoiding death except when it would otherwise be dramatically appropriate'. Such a mechanic helps provide narrative weight to an encounter. A character story about 'I was immune to death and I didn't die' is automatically less interesting than 'I thought for sure I was going to die but we lucked out'. There are a lot of people that like the idea of reducing 'random death' without removing 'all possibility of death'.

The comparison still has to be to normal D&D where you have no immunity to death.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I don't see how that is supposed to encourage character death. It reduces it by making you invulnerable some of the time. When you're not invulnerable, you're also more powerful.

It encourages character death at a specific time. Which is SUPPOSED to be in those dramatic encounters that matter (which players are supposed to just decide to choose because of course people would only use this voluntary mechanic as originally intended right?).

The designer of this mechanic did not want no character death. They wanted dramatically appropriately timed character death.

Then they designed a game mechanic that COULD provide that but didn't actually reliably provide that the moment it made contact with human players.

[tussock]

Yar, the question was, how to you have save or die mechanics in these modern games with multi-hour sessions dedicated to character creation, rather than the, 3d6 in order and you're probably a fighter and you have 10 hp, welcome to dnd, of old.

And I think just having random death kinda everywhere is fine if the players can choose to be immune to it. And then, how hard you gamify the benefits of being killable, is indeed something different players respond to differently. PL is correct that players will sometimes play Fighters, and sometimes play Wizards, and those options are very different in how good they are, and people will do that anyway. There may even be games where death just doesn't matter, rather than being at least somewhat time consuming.

And Kaelik is correct, you can go so far as to have no benefits for being killable, which in effect is just a system of save or die except for PCs and important NPCs and boss monsters, only except when those two kinds face each other in an agreeable genre-worthy fashion, that being the other option I touched on.

A third option, is have vastly quicker character generation, I guess where it's heavily randomised to avoid any chance of option paralysis. But that's sort of an option in what system you're playing, much like save-or-dies are. But, yeah, if you're making a save-or-die system, well, that's a thing to consider.

[MGuy]

No... What it is like in DnD doesn't matter because the ultimate judgement of this mechanic has to be made in the context it's in for the game you're making. So no matter how many times you bring up DnD out won't matter. Arguably if I wanted to waste time letting you go in a tangent about what happens in 3rd it wouldn't matter. Either way, in this context you're encouraging people to die because death is intrinsic to this mechanic in a way just having a penalty simply is not and is necessary to reap the benefits. You still haven't explained how this is better than in just letting people who want to be able to do that without effectively punishing people who don't.

[deaddmwalking]

Several people said 'this mechanic is stupid'. I asked why. I haven't seen a coherent answer.

I have explained how it can be genre appropriate (providing examples in media where characters gain a power-up with the potential for perma-death). I have explained how it can be used in conjunction with a specific design goal (characters only die in dramatically appropriate moments). I have explained how in games where death exists, having players 'opt-in' to the death mechanic automatically provides the psychological benefits of accepting what might otherwise be seen as 'unfair' results.

I don't see that giving people a power-up if they choose increased vulnerability is inherently wrong or inherently unfair to other players.

Existing powers (like Reckless Strike) provide increased power at the cost of increased vulnerability; this is a similar trade.

I don't know anybody that would be happy with a system where they to choose to die, rather than allowing it to be 'arbitrated' by some form of random chance. That said, there are circumstances where players might not be able to conceive of any way they could possibly survive so continuing to play that character feels 'cheap'. If you honestly think that's a better system, I think you'd explain what problems 'Death Flag' creates and how 'no death except if you really want to' solves better.

Please note that I expect that 'nobody really wants to die' most of the time. Outside of rare situations where a player needs to retire a character for out of game reasons, I think that players generally have compelling reasons to want to keep their character alive from one session to another. In a system without death flags (like D&D - the baseline we use when talking about different systems) characters can die when they want (suicide is an option). In a system with death flags, characters can die when they want (suicide is an option). In a system with 'nobody dies except when the want', characters can die when they want (suicide is an option).

Let me make this part explicit: people respond to 'risk versus reward'. 'Gambling' is highly addictive. Putting your character's life on the line and winning is a dopamine hit. Experiments show that hitting rats hit the 'variable chance but possible large reward' instead of the 'sure chance small reward' option, even if the small reward (in aggregate) is greater. I think a failure to understand that 'not dying' when you could is a reward is just a failure to understand basic human nature.

[MGuy]

I don't get how you don't understand something as simple as "By hiding a bonus behind a thing that makes you die you are encouraging people to die where otherwise you can't die in this system you created" or "By giving a bonus to people who are opting in to death you are effectively punishing people who don't want their characters to die". Just letting people opt into dying is better than what you've presented because 1) It doesn't do the thing where you're encouraging people to die and 2) you're not punishing people who don't want their character to die. This has already been pointed out. This is the last time I'm going to repeat that because this is already a repeat of a thing I explained in full a page ago now.

Speaking of a page ago I already came up with better alternatives but I'll list better ways of doing the thing you're describing you want right now.

1) Make it so only bosses can actually kill characters
2) Make it so that any character that would die can take a permanent penalty instead of dying
3) Make it so that characters only actually die if the entire party wipes
4) Have a meta currency that can be spent to buy one's way out of death through convenient narrative occurrence

Those are just of the top of my head except the first one which I already made mention of. Each of these has death as a possibility that's greatly slimmed down, can be interacted with by players, and none of them encourages people to actually die or creates an opt in/out system that implies a have vs have not divide between those who are immune to death and those who opt not to be.

[deaddmwalking]

Speaking of a page ago I already came up with better alternatives but I'll list better ways of doing the thing you're describing you want right now.
1) Make it so only bosses can actually kill characters

That seems worse to me because defining who or what is a boss monster is the purview of the GM. Boss monsters are already the most difficult encounters, so telling players that they can only die when they are most likely to die is largely the same as saying that they can die at any time. At the very least, players have no protection from death at times where they may wish they did.

2) Make it so that any character that would die can take a permanent penalty instead of dying

That seems worse because permanent penalties are really bad. Like obviously bad. Encouraging players to retire a character that they've invested in to create a new character that doesn't have a penalty is basically the definition of a perverse incentive. If you want players to invest in the game and develop a character, giving permanent penalties to characters as the natural result of play is bad. Characters should be BETTER OR EQUAL if they're played from 1st level not WORSE.

3) Make it so that characters only actually die if the entire party wipes

That seems worse because it puts a lot of pressure on the last surviving party member. When one player gets to make a choice that impacts every other player, that's a recipe for disagreement and intra-player conflict.

4) Have a meta currency that can be spent to buy one's way out of death through convenient narrative occurrence

That's a fine way to approach things. But I don't see how it is inherently BETTER.

I don't get how you don't understand something as simple as "By hiding a bonus behind a thing that makes you die you are encouraging people to die where otherwise you can't die in this system you created" or "By giving a bonus to people who are opting in to death you are effectively punishing people who don't want their characters to die".

I still disagree with the assessment that making a bonus/penalty available to all players inherently punishes players that choose not to take it. Players already make choices about whether to prioritize offense or defense. Sword & Board versus 2-handed weapons is a classic example of those types of choices. The character that wields a one-handed weapon is making a choice to be less effective than the two-handed weapon wielder in dealing damage/killing opponents. But if they benefit from taking less damage, having higher survivability, that's a trade that some (but not all) people are willing to take.

The question with death flag is 'is this bonus worth the potential consequence of dying'. If the answer is 'no' to one player, but the answer is 'yes' to another player, that's working as designed. We understand intuitively that some people value survival more than others. The most likely result of this is that some characters that have traditionally played more defensively minded characters, recognizing that they have a 'perfect defense' are more willing to experiment with less defensively minded characters.

[MGuy]

1) Everything is the purview of the GM. The best way to prevent this is to not allow death but your earlier quibbling with that was you don't want it in the hands of players. This does that. Anytime the GM can rocks fall everyone dies the entire group. You're complaining about how the game works. Stop it.
2) Your offer permanently penalizes all players who don't raise their death flag point blank period as has been pointed out to you many times. At least this is a choice that only comes up when they are going to lose their characters anyway. This is better because you're only penalizing them when it comes up and not encouraging character loss by hiding a bonus behind allowing their character to die.
3) It doesn't do any of the things you've described so I'm going to ignore this because you're wrong.
4) It is better in the way that I described at the end.

So ultimately your criticisms are a complaint about the inherent nature of the GM controlling the game, the apparent fact that you want to insist on encouraging player death by offering a bonus to let it happen, and repeatedly misunderstanding how this deathflag thing is not the same as choosing whether to carry a shield or not. See my post on the last page to understand how you're getting the latter wrong. As for the rest you're just wrong or just want to entice players into dying which would be fine if you could just admit that's what you want to happen.

[deaddmwalking]

You know, this site used to be good about explaining their reasoning about why things were good or bad. Not so much anymore.

1) Everything is the purview of the GM. The best way to prevent this is to not allow death but your earlier quibbling with that was you don't want it in the hands of players. This does that. Anytime the GM can rocks fall everyone dies the entire group. You're complaining about how the game works. Stop it.

MGuy, you're full on in crazy town right now. With a deathflag, if you haven't raised it you can't be killed. That means you're immune to 'rocks fall, everyone dies'. You know, by the rules. I didn't say I don't want death in the hands of the players - I said players don't want to choose to die. Players want to gamble their lives and consistently win. All the good stories are about surviving 'near certain death'. So if death is a) completely impossible or b) players must choose it there's no 'risk of death being avoided'.

2) Your offer permanently penalizes all players who don't raise their death flag point blank period as has been pointed out to you many times. At least this is a choice that only comes up when they are going to lose their characters anyway. This is better because you're only penalizing them when it comes up and not encouraging character loss by hiding a bonus behind allowing their character to die.

Semantically, forgoing a bonus isn't the same as receiving a penalty. While mathematically you could argue it is the same, there's a whole lot of psychology around being happy to gain something and being unhappy about losing something you've already gotten. If you give players the benefit of having their death flag raised, but they can take a penalty to become immune to death, choosing immunity, psychologically, is reducing your character's effectiveness, so you feel bad. But if your death-flag is down, but you can raise it gaining a bonus, you psychologically feel good because you've gotten something you didn't have before. Further, when both players have the same power, but they don't choose to use it at the same rate, they still have the same powers. Normal people aren't going to feel bad that they're not entering 'desperation mode' because it's a power trade (more combat power/less defensive power) - if they did feel bad, they'd just activate the power, too. You're literally making a calculation on whether the benefit outweighs the cost and the moment it does, you activate it.

3) It doesn't do any of the things you've described so I'm going to ignore this because you're wrong.

You're wrong. If the whole party is in the process of 'wiping' there is going to be one character who is the last to go down (at least in most cases). That means that the survival of every other character depends on his or her choices. If s/he escapes (doesn't wipe) the whole party survives. If s/he goes down, everyone dies. That means every other player has a strong interest in making sure the last surviving character makes the 'right choices' - the ones that allow them to survive. If someone else's poor decisions determine whether your character dies, you're likely to have conflict. On the other hand, if it was 100% based on your own decision making (did I raise my death flag, or did I choose not to), nothing anyone else does determines what happens to your character. If you don't raise your death flag, but the rest of the party does, and they all die, they're not likely to be angry that you didn't power up - they had the choice to remain 'invulnerable' and they made a choice completely independent of your choices; if they hadn't chosen to raise their death flag, they'd still be alive. Since it comes from their choice, it's harder to be angry at someone else who didn't play 'smart' tactically from their perspective.

4) It is better in the way that I described at the end.

So ultimately your criticisms are a complaint about the inherent nature of the GM controlling the game, the apparent fact that you want to insist on encouraging player death by offering a bonus to let it happen, and repeatedly misunderstanding how this deathflag thing is not the same as choosing whether to carry a shield or not. See my post on the last page to understand how you're getting the latter wrong. As for the rest you're just wrong or just want to entice players into dying which would be fine if you could just admit that's what you want to happen.

Look, you're being like Shitmuffin with 'see my post on a completely different page'. I maintain that compared to most games where 'death just happens', having players get to choose to be protected from death reduces character death. It also reduces what GM fuckery can do. It empowers players. But characters being 100% protected from all bad things ever isn't good for the game. A mechanic that lets players choose how much they're willing to be fucked with is pretty empowering.

[Kaelik]

If everyone but Deaddm understands what is being said, that's probably a sign that the issue isn't with five people being unable to explain their points, it's probably an issue with one reader.

And Mguy is not saying "see my post on a different page for a part of this argument" he's saying "literally every post for three pages is people saying the same thing to you deadDM and then you saying things that show you don't understand it, so I'm not going to make the 10th consecutive restatement of the same thing to the single person who doesn't understand it."

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

MGuy, you're full on in crazy town right now. With a deathflag, if you haven't raised it you can't be killed. That means you're immune to 'rocks fall, everyone dies'. You know, by the rules. I didn't say I don't want death in the hands of the players - I said players don't want to choose to die. Players want to gamble their lives and consistently win. All the good stories are about surviving 'near certain death'. So if death is a) completely impossible or b) players must choose it there's no 'risk of death being avoided'.

This is a solid example of why you don't understand the very basics of this topic.

The death flag mechanic does not make the party immune from rocks fall you all die. It CAN do that but it isn't guaranteed. Because you have no fucking control over when the death flag is raised or not.

Even if death flag is used exclusively as intended with no "abuse" or other "misuse" by the players the SECOND you hit any and all major encounters the entire party becomes instantly vulnerable to TPK by "rocks fall you all die".

Then you even further misunderstand the fundamentals by calling it "gambling with their lives and consistently winning". Which is for a start fucking drivel baby brain bullshit about crying and demanding to consistently win against the odds. But more to the point has no fucking understanding that death flag vs rocks fall doesn't even have odds it isn't a gamble, its a state based outcome determined exclusively by interacting arbitrary choices with no random element at all.

You basically have a mechanic that is one half arbitrary choices, and you don't understand how arbitrary choices interact, with themselves or with the rest of a game.

[merxa]

i've lost the thread myself, if anyone wants to define 'deathflag' that might help me out.

returning to the 'narrative death' -- if say you had a deathflag, whatever it means, instead of a mechanical adjustment, why not a narrative adjustment, if say, you cannot die then your character also can't have substantial narrative impact, and only the 'narrative' causes you insist on happening can be done if you're willing to raise your 'deathflag' for them.

You could apply some mechanics to this, call it a conviction meter, give it number, and use it to 'raise the stakes', wager on how much narrative weight you will stake on an outcome. 'fighting to the death' tends to be the default mode, but providing an avenue to wage lower stakes encounters is probably a worthy goal.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

instead of a mechanical adjustment, why not a narrative adjustment,

Because that's just dumb.

The problem with the character death for bonuses scheme is gratuitously rewarding players who don't care for an ongoing narrative with their character and penalizing those that do.

The problem with character death for narrative impact is that now you want to give players a choice between having characters that impact the story and... having persistent characters at all. That's basically just a set up designed to try and prod outcomes to the point where the only characters that ever mattered to the narrative are all dead ones. Which kinda... doesn't work well with ongoing narrative at all in the first place.

And it's still open to exploit because fuck it, the same dynamic exists between players with differing levels of attachment to their characters. IF I don't give a shit about keeping my character but you do then my impacts on the game as a player get to be consistently bigger than yours. So fuck you guy who likes narrative haha Mc FaceStabbington the 23rd 24th is STILL better than your lame character with his ongoing "story" about nothing of consequence ever happening, haha. Oh and so were ALL FaceStabbington's ancestors.

I'm going to go out on a limb here too, and suggest that if you are trying to use narrative impact as bait, that maybe the players that want to have narrative impact are the ones who care about narrative at all, like say, the ones who want to tell an ongoing story about the same character. So maybe rethink your basic premise pretty hard here.

And it still comes back to the question. How in any conceivable way is this just better than arbitrarily deciding between the players at the table if each character death is really going to happen or not as game events generate character defeats?

[MGuy]

I'm not repeating this thing again. I laid it out fully in the first two posts I made when I chimed in and I've explained the issues repeatedly in multiple posts since. If you don't understand his mechanic just read my posts and you won't get lost.

Just as a sanity check I presented this subject to someone who isn't on this site and is new to gaming and had another friend who's getting into game design read this. I am more than confident that the issues I've pointed out are not difficult for people to understand.

I'm not going to deconstruct all of that last screed dead made because I am pretty sure that this isn't a cliff dead is going to be talked down off of.

I'll say that his response to the third one is particularly dumb, that PL is correct about his response to the first, and kaelik is correct that the same shit had been said for multiple days now and that repeating it at this point would be shad level insanity. The reason his response to the third one is particularly dumb to me is that logically if you can imagine that the surviving character's actions matter enough that survival really hinges on them making the correct choices then everyone who went down prior also had that much agency and is to blame for even leaving it on the survivor's shoulders. However that doesn't matter because the person who gets the blame for a tpk 90% of the time is the GM. Unless a player does something actively harmful to the group during the encounter no one is going to be getting angry at the poor schlub who was just the last to fall. Otherwise this complaint is not just dumb if you think about it but not what happens in actual play. This kind of dumb shit happens in league of legends or overwatch.

[merxa]

it does continually amaze me how many members of the community here hate pc death, some going so far as to essentially ban it from their games. certainly different from my mind set and experience, but d&d editions have seemingly traveled a similar path of pushing away pc death, perhaps we'll see an optional no death rule in the near future.

[Thaluikhain]

i've lost the thread myself,

Yeah, same, though that's not the first time that's happened to me on these forums, might just be me.

Though, even if, assuming for the sake of argument that deathflags were determined to be a good (or at least not bad) concept, getting them to work properly and not open up all sorts of problems is another thing entirely. Looks like something you need to either really get right, or just not have, and you don't actually need it.

[deaddmwalking]

The death flag mechanic does not make the party immune from rocks fall you all die. It CAN do that but it isn't guaranteed. Because you have no fucking control over when the death flag is raised or not.

Why not? When Tussock brought it up, you (as a player) decide whether to raise the death flag (making you vulnerable) or not. If you (as a player) don't, you're invincible.

Like, if your only criticism is 'death flags can't work because only the GM has control over them' the obvious fix would be 'what if players had control over them'. That's how I understood it from the beginning.

There's no point to it if the player doesn't have any input.