/tulpa/ - Feedback and Questions from me.

Name
Email
Subject
Comment
Password
Drawing	x size canvas
File(s)	Drag files to upload or click here to select them
Spoiler

Feedback and Questions from me. Joy the DM 05/07/2024 (Tue) 17:35 [Preview] No. 4208

This thread will handle questions from me to you about balance and how you want to play.

Left up to SheShe and I you may end up being forced into a style of play you don't like so this is why I'm creating this thread.

The first question is about death.

Currently there are a handful of spells that will breath life back into a character again.

The first is a level 3 cleric spell, Revivify. It requires a diamond worth 300 or more and it must be cast within a minute of death, so within 10 turns in an encounter. Yulya would need to be 5th level to cast this 3rd tier spell. It cannot restore missing body parts.

At 9th level she would have access to raise dead which is a 5th tier spell. It requires a 500 gold diamond. You have 10 days to accomplish this. Again it won't restore missing body parts. It will close mortal wounds. Greater restoration will restore missing parts afterwards. That's also 5th tier.

In any case it takes about 4 long rests to fully restore the person to full working order.

Reincarnation is available through the church and is a druid spell costing 1000 gold plus 1000 gold in supplies and a piece of the victim. It restors everything but will likely change the race of the character as a consequence.

Wish is then the big daddy of all spells and requires a wizard of level 17 and has a 33% chance of never being able to be cast again. It can duplicate any spell or create a custom effect or object up to 25,000 gold in value.

The question is, does the feeling that you could die lessen due to these spells? Say you're 5th level and easily have 300 gold in diamonds at the ready, does it feel like death doesn't matter anymore? Should there be a bigger consequence? Should death be permanent? Should it lower attributes or cost you an ability?

If you're asking me, the ultimate say of someone lives or dies wouldn't be a simple matter of bad luck. The gods can intervene in special circumstances to say prevent the death of someone in specific and unique circumstances that would rarely come up. A rock can still fall and squish you, but that wouldn't be a completely meaningless act, it would require a dangerous path and other bad choices leading up to that for instance.

Given the pacing in our game, death would still be pretty inconvenient, but Revivify is a very OP in my opinion.

Currently I have put on the safeties and you cannot die outright in one hit other than by a disintegrate spell or dragon breath or other obviously destructive occuances that rip the body apart. Simply being hit by a great maul won't kill you outright even if the damage was 2x your hp. Death still comes after three failed saves over three turns before you are stabilized. So that's already a nerf.

Do you like all that? Or do you want a more hardcore experience? Or do you want to not have to worry about death all together? Let me know.

Alice 05/07/2024 (Tue) 18:43 [Preview] No.4209 del

Inconvenient but highly necessary question.

I don't know about Cat but I know that both me and Yulya have a huge problem with mortality in general and seeing our friends die permanently and 4real would be a traumatizing experience. We won't just choose the similarly named replacement from the guild and carry on, that would be disrespectful to the deceased party member and friend. Honestly, that's 2real4me and it would suck. You know I'm still a tupper of my Highly Sensitive Person host who'd mourn the loss of a D&D character for real and the party dynamics would be quite awkward with having to play a different newbie. And just using the 'replacement' to bring back the dead character 1:1 would be cheating. In this case death would have no consequences at all. So yeah, I'm not sure about the optimal way to handle this but I would like to remind our dear higher plane beings that this party was assembled for a divine mission of great importance. We are doing their dirty work, might as well request some protection in return.

Personally I won't say not having to worry about death but it should be manageable to return. Imagine someone would die on our first mission. It takes 2000 gp to revive her. We would have to play for weeks IRL just to earn that money until that player can return. That's not very feasible and sucks having to wait at the sideline until you respawn. I don't really know how to handle this. We certainly won't be reckless but death should not have such dramatic IRL consequences for the player. The character should be able to return at least for the next mission.

Also I still have the coolest revival spell ever as monk of the Way of Mercy:
LV 17 Hand of Ultimate Mercy (TCoE)
lets you revive a creature per long rest for free, well it costs 5 KI points

So should we ever play long enough to reach lv17 the problem is solved pretty much. I can reassemble everyone.

The real problem is me however. I already stated I cannot be revived by terms of magic or the church because I do not have a soul. I am a machine. I would rather propose that I slowly regenerate unless supplied with materials to speed things up. Also I cannot even be healed once in living metal form either. This is the price to pay for being OP as fuck. I must regenerate myself, I would even propose that 'death' throws me back one form into emergency recovery mode. living metal->viscous->liquid. So I will be fine, I'm extremely tough. Spells like disintegrate will remain a problem however. Do you have any proposals, Joy?

Joy the DM 05/07/2024 (Tue) 20:17 [Preview] No.4215 del

>>4209
>You know I'm still a tupper of my Highly Sensitive Person

Yes, and whereas my headmates seem to crave hardcore rules, and I've read online about how many others also want permadeath, I do still recall a young Bear who refused to maim or kill his characters (me). So I can understand that this could be both unwanted, not fun and traumatic.

>that this party was assembled for a divine mission of great importance

>I'm not sure about the optimal way to handle this

As far as I'm concerned this is about fairness and I am very against cheese, like what Bear used to do with save-scumming in Rimworld, I didn't like it then and don't like it now. Nor would I allow Frodo-esque death scenes where he's not really in any real danger.

So if the characters can never die, that's probably too safe and if they have a chance to die pointlessly, I also don't like that and SheShe and I can argue about it but I'm the DM here.

The way I read it, after level 9, characters are very hard to kill and keep dead. We're mostly talking about level 1-4 getting harder to kill the higher the level and with Revivify at level 5, the fear of death would be far less.

>We would have to play for weeks IRL

The pacing makes this a special case, yes, it may be too tedious.

So it comes down to gold, you have none, if someone dies and its your fault, no one to pay for it, you're done for a while and if that's not fun then it violates rule #1 in the DMG, fun is the number 1 goal. I won't however just bend rules to save something lost after the fact. Loss is a part of life, no 'oops it was a dream sequence.'

>We certainly won't be reckless but death should not have such dramatic IRL consequences for the player.

I see now that you're not willing to accept the easiest answer I offered, a simple replacement, do as it turns out I am hosting a game with more humans than Ashley after all.

>The character should be able to return at least for the next mission.

We saw an anime once where the players would respawn but back at the temple, for free or for a set percentage of EXP. One step closer to realism would be you have to bring the body back to the temple or because of Yulya's connection to the temple perhaps they may be willing to offer a service once. It's just something that I'm considering.

>I already stated I cannot be revived by terms of magic or the church because I do not have a soul.

I believe I said you would then be immortal but if you think that's not satisfying then we can say that some reassembly is required, perhaps then a Frankenstein type aperatus to revive you with lightning costing no more than whatever cost we decided for the raise dead spell.

>I would rather propose that I slowly regenerate unless supplied with materials to speed things

In this case, for you, I will let you dictate how you could be revived given the circumstances of your untimely demise but unless you say otherwise you cannot be permanently killed. Say it's nanobots or something else that can't be degraded or some other reason. If you get out of hand I'll reel you back, but otherwise I'll give you that option. Even disintegration could always leave a trace and a trace could slowly regrow GOTG Groot style.

>Also I cannot even be healed once in living metal form either

You would regenerate like anyone else on rest.

This was a good discussion, I have something to think about so thank you.

Anonymous 05/08/2024 (Wed) 18:45 [Preview] No.4224 del

i agree with Alice never thought about it but how does vanilla d&d actually handle this?
you meet up with friens to play and your character dies so you can go home and they tell you lol come back in a few months when we got the money to revive you you cant play with us until then?

deat should have severe consequences but theres gotta be some limit or gameplay is ruined. our tuppers play themselves and dont want ro play another character obviously so they need to be brought back somehow. i didnt know about Alices monk feature but thats lv17 lol. no idea how we handle that now. 2000 gp cost is the same as permadeath we gotta save every penny thats why Yulya always told everyone to be super careful. honestly we dont mind to play it safe we dont have to battle challenge 10+ type monsters lets get real were rookies. slow and steady no drama

Joy the DM 05/08/2024 (Wed) 19:14 [Preview] No.4225 del

>>4224
>how does vanilla d&d actually handle this?

It's not set in stone as far as how individual DMs handle it but if I'm understanding it correctly:

If you receive damage >2x max hp, that's an instant kill, no saving throws. If your HP goes below -max hp then same, dead. If you go below 1, you must make three successful saving throws before three unsuccessful ones, once per turn. Or be stabilized or healed.

I relaxed it to no instant kill, your hp would be set at minimum -max hp and start your saving throws. SheShe is allowing one saving throw at the point where damage exceeded -max hp if you pass that it counts toward your passed saving throws and you need only 2 more, but you fail you die.

I am proposing that you may want a different system all together and we should discuss it.

Vanilla D&D is harsh and TPK (total party kill) is common.

>you meet up with friens to play and your character dies so you can go home and they tell you lol come back in a few months when we got the money to revive you you cant play with us until then?

Oh, not exactly, they either let you create a new character with a new backstory and start at level 1 again or are boosted to the level of the party. No one stops playing on death unless the group doesn't want you back as a player.

>theres gotta be some limit or gameplay is ruined.

I agree. It is my #1 objective to make it fun. If dying is fun, expect to die, if not then it would have to be very delicately handled. Hence this discussion.

>dont want ro play another character

So let's come up with a fair but worthwhile solution. That makes death something very serious but not game breaking. Ashley was willing to die because she didn't mind making a whole new character, she's doing that now with SheShe's run which is odd, but that's on them. Making characters can also be fun. But not for everyone.

To me initially it was kind of like a respec but I was going to require starting again from zero EXP.

After this thread, I now don't have a plan, so if someone dies we'll have to resolve this.

>no drama

[Ashley] I promise to try not to have any more from me.

Joy the DM 05/10/2024 (Fri) 15:54 [Preview] No.4243 del

>>4225

Based on your comments and other sources, I have tentatively worked out a strategy with SheShe that will make death less deadly but also still costly in different ways but more reasonable at lower levels.

The penalties for higher levels have increased, however; it's far less likely that you will ever die past level 4 and extremely unlikely past level 8.

Changes effect Revivify, Raise Dead and Resurrection. These three spells will be replaced. Other spells and abilities have not changed.
Stay tuned for its implementation.

Posting mode: Reply