Remove Death in BG

[Wolfrayne]

I know this has been said before but its getting really out of hand now. People wandering up with corpses and casually just dumping them for their friends to resurrect like its no big deal. This has happened to me almost every single day for a week now and its so immersion breaking.

I suggest this fix. Remove death. Now what i mean by this is when you die instead change it so that raise dead is "Revive" and rather than die people are "knocked out cold" and corpses are "unconscious body".

When you die instead of saying "you died" you are conscious and when you get revived the game tells you "A patrol group saved you from your fate" or something along those lines. Keep the penalties, keep the same system just put a new coat of paint on it so people stop acting like death is just casual walk down the mortal coil.

It is so. absolutely game breakingly stupid when people just wander up with a cart load of corpses and dump them in front of another group with a "Res please" kind of attitude.

[Xorena]

Other servers have smelling salts that revive conscious but not dead PCs. Maybe we should consider such a system (and include it with the hardcore PC rules)

[Tanlaus]

It really sounds more like a problem of poor RP. I’m not certain there is any mechanical change that will fix this. “Rez plebes!” Just becomes “salts pleeze!” But the fundamental problem still remains.

[JustAnotherGuy]

It really sounds more like a problem of poor RP. I’m not certain there is any mechanical change that will fix this. “Rez plebes!” Just becomes “salts pleeze!” But the fundamental problem still remains.

The issue is with the poor RP, though. "Please help me revive my unconscious friend" is way more palatable than a casual, "My friend died. Anyone here able to resurrect them?"

I agree with the premise of the OP. If it's a "death", then death is commonplace. Removing it being death automatically changes the RP.

[Wolfrayne]

It really sounds more like a problem of poor RP. I’m not certain there is any mechanical change that will fix this. “Rez plebes!” Just becomes “salts pleeze!” But the fundamental problem still remains.

The issue is with the poor RP, though. "Please help me revive my unconscious friend" is way more palatable than a casual, "My friend died. Anyone here able to resurrect them?"

I agree with the premise of the OP. If it's a "death", then death is commonplace. Removing it being death automatically changes the RP.

This is exactly it. Its the whole idea that death is a revolving door. Its dumb and incredibly immersion breaking for some people. People act like coming back from the dead is no different to coming home after a long days work and its stupid.

Change death to being knocked out and at least its a little more palpable. Im not saying people cant die because it should still be part of it but it should never be so.. casual.

[Anrilor]

I know some people already rp it as being 'knocked out' and the raise dead scrolls used are 'smelling salts'

So not everyone rps people being dead. Or coming back to life. So there are some RPers that have taken that route over the revolving door of "hey Jergal, its me, ya boi, back again and still not my time. Can I go back now?"

There would be however some changes on rping pvp death. As currently you "forget" who attacked/killed you if you die and the events and fight leading to it. So interested in hearing how you would adjust for the pvp side of things.

[Hoihe]

I feel this could be a slippery slope of stripping players from having easy access to Raise Dead and Resurrection.

If characters - be it through scrolls or clerics, still retain access to these spells without DMs - fine.

But don't remove these spells.

[Steve]

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=69704

Yep.

[c2k]

Death is only a revolving door on the Sword Coast....

[Almarea90]

I already consider mechanical death as being knocked down and I think it should be implemented IG. Real death should either be enforced by a DM or an outcome of PvP if the winning party so decides and that's the reason why I would still make available resurrection to the characters.
I would also introduce the PnP cost in diamonds for the resurrection spells.

[Alexander Holgart]

I feel this could be a slippery slope of stripping players from having easy access to Raise Dead and Resurrection.

If characters - be it through scrolls or clerics, still retain access to these spells without DMs - fine.

But don't remove these spells.

I don't think this is about taking those spell out of the picture but to make them more meaningful.

I'd love a context in which death IC happens less and also in which Resurrection is RPed with more meaningful interactions than just cast it and you're good to go again.

People would still be allowed to be brought back to life but it would make things more believable I think.

[Deathgrowl]

Adding some smelling salts would be nice. Perhaps a heal skill roll for stabilising someone who goes down (in pnp it is DC 15, I think).

But can the game differentiate between different kinds of mechanical death? If you reach 0 hit points by a disintegration spell, you are - as the spell suggests - disintegrated. And it happens whether you made the save or not, so long as you go to 0 or less hitpoints. If you fail the save of a finger of death spell, you obviously die. And there are mobs/bosses with those kinds of spells (ogre chieftain comes to mind, with finger of death). No amount of heal skill stabilisation or smelling salts are going to fix that.

I would personally just encourage the culture around the death mechanic to change, so that no deaths that aren't as specific as those I just mentioned, count as actual deaths. Instead of patching up a problem with rules or mechanics in this case, I'd rather just see encouragement in RP. Be patient with people who are still learning the ropes and intricacies of both the server and RP in general and gently encourage.

[LivT]

I am doing a Bad and replying before having read all other responses.

We have smelling salts on this server.

I am guessing an overhaul of the established death framework is going to be a LOT of work for our coders for... very minor rewards.

Either just get a general consensus that 'death' is just a knock-out or 'seeing the light' and you're brought back. Or, at the absolute most, ask for a tiny text change in the dialogue when you find a body (even then, I don't know how hard this would be...)

It's an immersion breaking game mechanic but not a game breaking one. Hopefully good rpers know how to rp bringing brought back from the edge; maybe dizzy, wounded, sore, weak, for a while after.

[cosmic ray]

Raise Dead and Ressurection are extremely powerful spells and their castings are very harrowing and punishing both for the cleric and the dead person being brought back. They are also very rare in the FR lore not only because most clerics will never be able to cast them, but also because the necessary components cost veritable fortunes that only the very rich can afford. This is how the setting is kept from degenerating into what the OP described, and some of us consider to be a Saturday morning children's cartoon immersion-breaking farce, but on BGtSCC there are no such elements to keep the setting realistic within its fantastical magic rules, so it's like watching Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner every day, which gets very tiring very quickly.

Where common sense fails, the OP's suggestion likely becomes a necessary far lesser evil.

[Requiem]

While I do believe that that Raise Dead / Resurrection have their place in the event of an actual RP'd death, I default to the "knocked out / unconscious" camp as well.

I'm not sure how feasible this is, and not without a general consensus, but...

"Raise Dead" as a name for example at face value implies jist that: raising the dead. Maybe a name change of said scrolls in the loot table to "Smelling Salts", "Revive / Raise Dead", or something along those lines can kind of "nudge" the culture of a downed PC in the direction of being knocked out or unconscious as the standard expectation (while still allowing the exception).

As for the spells themselves, maybe a note can be placed within their description to enforce the clarification.

I have next to 0 knowledge on how doable this is and understand that it would take some added work, which I'm always hesitant to suggest. Maybe it's not needed at all.

Suppose the point I'm driving at is if there's a "simple" way of shifting to this understanding, it's laid out right from the get go with every scroll and spell.