What causes (or prevents) death (resurrecting) IG?

Dreamingfurther

Dreamingfurther

Baron
While reading and thinking over other discussions I thought it might be interesting to discus what people think cause characters to resurrect IG?

This discussion idea was also somewhat prompted in my mind by an experience this past weekend. At the SoMN event this past weekend we had a Friday night wave battle in which 7 people resurrected. That many resurrections, as I know is similar for at least several other chapters out there is pretty high for an 'average' wave battle. But I thought I'd note this situation because the resurrections certainly did not happen because everyone was out of resources. (It was Friday night...) They also did not happen due to there being no 'powerful' people in town. Rather from what I gathered from most of the people present is that the resurrections happened primarily because everyone was largely disorganized and information (some players had this) about how to 'stop' the fight or whatever wasn't really spread around so that an organized effort could be made.

Other situations in which I've also witnessed and/or heard of players resurrecting more often are of course modules where you don't have a much larger group all fighting together against (usually) a smaller number of NPC's. In these situations failures in organization, or even one critical person 'going down' at a bad moment can tear the group apart and there is no or little safety net.

Anyways, as a result I have been lead to think more and more that well organized players are really the backbone behind a game that doesn't have a huge amount of resurrection all the time. I know very well from experience and observance that a stack of MI's goes a long way towards helping individual characters become more powerful, but everyone runs out of stuff eventually. I have seen the most powerful PC characters I know of in existence in the game (40th level + in mercury golems) run for their lives and be completely dependent on other PC's around them to survive. This being the case it seems to me then that MI's really aren't the only driving force behind a low resurrection style of game.

What do other people think about this? I'm totally willing to believe that I'm wrong on this track, but it seems like a well organized group is far more powerful and likely to survive than a more magic item heavy but totally disorganized number of individuals.

Furthermore do we really want to make the game so deadly, or change the rules that allow people to survive to make it less survivable in order to make well organized groups die frequently? It seems to me that doing that would inevitably start to alienate committed players, especially newer people who haven't figured out how to 'win' at the game so to speak.

Thoughts?
 
I think it's all about organization. knowing what to do when, and how. using your resources, and having strategy. level and MI only mean things when put in the right hands. I like a deadly game and think "stupid should hurt". Only 2 things insult me about deaths and resurrections:

1) when it is done poorly... (battle was statted wrong, players suffer... NPC openly cheated or was not supposed to KB someone, etc.)
2) when it is not done at all... (battle is statted well, players died because they were dumb... let's life them because killing PCs is mean and we don't want the players to be mad at us)

In short, I <3 death, as long as it is done right, and I welcome more of it.

-Robb "killed 8 PCs last event I ran and they all seemed to like it" Graves
 
To be fair Robb, it was only 7, Fuzzy rezzed twice and Haz begs for death every time he's IG so his don't count. :thumbsup:
 
Dreamingfurther said:
While reading and thinking over other discussions I thought it might be interesting to discus what people think cause characters to resurrect IG?
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Death is what happens when you make enough mistakes. Sufficient mistakes are generally equal to the formula of "Number of Life effects available ...+1." :)

This discussion idea was also somewhat prompted in my mind by an experience this past weekend. At the SoMN event this past weekend we had a Friday night wave battle in which 7 people resurrected. That many resurrections, as I know is similar for at least several other chapters out there is pretty high for an 'average' wave battle. But I thought I'd note this situation because the resurrections certainly did not happen because everyone was out of resources. (It was Friday night...) They also did not happen due to there being no 'powerful' people in town. Rather from what I gathered from most of the people present is that the resurrections happened primarily because everyone was largely disorganized and information (some players had this) about how to 'stop' the fight or whatever wasn't really spread around so that an organized effort could be made.
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There you go. The town as a whole went in poorly prepared. People die. I've seen PC's croak simply because they came in on the wrong path into a battle, got mumped, and bled out while half a dozen healers were sitting around on the other side. A disorganized group makes mistakes much, much faster and in greater numbers, because it frequently leads to a concentration of force on a much smaller portion of the PC's than their numbers would suggest. And then you get dead PC's.

Other situations in which I've also witnessed and/or heard of players resurrecting more often are of course modules where you don't have a much larger group all fighting together against (usually) a smaller number of NPC's. In these situations failures in organization, or even one critical person 'going down' at a bad moment can tear the group apart and there is no or little safety net.
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Yep. See above, only on a smaller scale.

Anyways, as a result I have been lead to think more and more that well organized players are really the backbone behind a game that doesn't have a huge amount of resurrection all the time. I know very well from experience and observance that a stack of MI's goes a long way towards helping individual characters become more powerful, but everyone runs out of stuff eventually. I have seen the most powerful PC characters I know of in existence in the game (40th level + in mercury golems) run for their lives and be completely dependent on other PC's around them to survive. This being the case it seems to me then that MI's really aren't the only driving force behind a low resurrection style of game.
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MI's give you force multipliers- that is, it turns one PC into the equivalent of more than one. The more MI's, the greater the effect- a single CLW item isn't gonna do much. Enough healing/protective MI's on your warrior suddenly turns him into a superior Earth Templar. Spells are basically throwing your build (like alchemy is tossing gold) at your opponents, so MI's can give you a character who's "build" is higher than what a mod or town battle is gauged for.

Of course, if you can readily take those sorta things into account, you get the aforementioned mercury golem. MI's aren't invincibilty- but they give you more safe choices to make before the risky ones. That PC golem got to run away and live, where if he'd been outside the golem he'd probably have been pulverized. Even if you're glowing like a rack of Christmas lights from sheer ritual power, enough even modestly effective opponents can wear you down- or tangle you up while someone else does the beatings.

Furthermore do we really want to make the game so deadly, or change the rules that allow people to survive to make it less survivable in order to make well organized groups die frequently? It seems to me that doing that would inevitably start to alienate committed players, especially newer people who haven't figured out how to 'win' at the game so to speak.
Thoughts?
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The death rate was much higher, once upon a time when I started. People permed, people died, stupid things were expected to result in trips to a Healer's Guild or a dirt nap. Life was dangerous, people kept themselves together, and it was quite exciting. PC's died...and they started new characters.

It also happened to be when the player population locally peaked...at around 200-300 people per event.

Now, the death system is far weaker, PC's die far less often, MI's aren't rare....and if you can point me at regularly attended events of 200-300 people, I'll be very pleasantly surprised.

I'd be all for games becoming more deadly, especially as level increases. The death system is quite forgiving enough as it stands for newer players to take a death or two as learning experiences, and a high-level group should have a good reason to have lived long enough to get there- in other words, organization.
 
From my rather extensive experience in the game, here is what I have seen that causes and prevents resurrection:

Causes:
--Wave Battles
----NPC Ratio: The closer the NPC:pC ratio gets to 1:1, the higher likelihood of resurrections. At even 2:1, I expect a few resurrections in a weekend. At anything truly approaching 1:1, even a massively underscaled wave battle has a reasonable chance of causing resurrections.
----Mass Loss Groupings: This is a theory I learned from Battletech, but applies to Alliance as well. For the most part, combatants fight at close to 100% efficiency until the very moment they drop. As such, it is common for many to be fighting "on fumes" until suddenly a large swath are incapacitated at once. Resurrections ensue.
----Repeated Delivery Types/Carriers: There are enough defenses that the PC population of most games can face an entire wave battle of creatures swinging Drain or throwing Poison Sleeps (so many defenses to that it is crazy). But, if that is the main type of opponent for the weekend or multiple wave battles use that mechanic, eventually every hit is basically an unstoppable disable. That is "run for the wards" time.
--Modules
----Bad Scaling: Module scaling is significantly harder than weekend or wave battle scaling. Non-combat skills, time since reset, and player skill has a much higher influence on PC ability than in wave battles. Also, there is basically no safety net. In plenty of modules, the nearest help is more than five minutes away (round trip).
----Disorganization: Ever see a module team with 4 earth casters and 2 rogues? I have. Unless the module involves undead, it is usually referred to as a TPK. Teamwork is important, but balance is even more important. A poorly balanced module group is basically begging to hear a 15 minute long story.
--Random
----Dark Clothes at Night: Skulking has got to be the number one way to earn a resurrection. PCs don't see you when you are lying on the ground, but some NPC does and lands a Terminate on your back.
----Heroics: I forget what movie it is from, but there is a great quote: "Do you know the definition of a hero? It is someone that gets other people killed." Yep. Heroics are cool, but they very often get someone (possibly you) killed. You want to live longer? Don't be a hero and avoid heroes.

Prevents:
--Magic Items: As much as I hate to admit it, it is the elephant in the corner. The more you glow like a Christmas Tree, the less likely you are to die in any given situation.
--Rules Knowledge: Not rules lawyering, but rules knowledge. The game has a crazy number of effects. Knowing precisely what counters what and most efficiently is key to survival. Similarly, knowing exactly how dangerous an effect is also keeps you alive. For example, against a large group, Fear is rarely deadly. Don't waste resources removing it. Let the time run out. That Awaken may be much more essential to remove a Berserk from Super Beat Stick Man later.
--Buddy System: Better yet, team system. If you are always responsible for the whereabouts of one or more people and one or multiple people are responsible for your whereabouts, you are much less likely to die, unless large swaths of people are dying.

-MS
 
I have a pretty good idea of how we all died, David. You see, when the chimeric spirits showed up, people were all over the place. People were in the tavern, at their cabins, near monster camp. There was no clear grouping of players and some players were chasing the chimeric spirits while others were running away...

The chimeric spirits killed a number of people inside the tavern. I went inside when I heard one killing out killing blows. I hit him for a bunch, but I didn't get him to follow me out of the tavern. The next time I tried to lure him out, I got hit by a binding spell, had no protectives and got beat down. I died trying to save other people who had been caught fighting alone.

Also, we have a number of players who draw crowds around themselves, who rally the players to go save someone or fight off a powerful creature. These players have the skills and defenses to take on something like a chimeric spirit longer than I was able to. (Currently, I have one protection to call on). I don't know where Panda was during that fight, and Fern had not shown up yet. Thor had been enslaved and taken off to die. We were effectively leaderless.
 
Mike

Firefly is your quoted movie.

I'd disagree with only one thing. Number of NPCs doesn't change the deadliness of a wave battle, if it's being scaled well. Actually, it allows more room for error: body, damage and lives is an acceptable stat card if you have 20 NPCs challenging 30 players. If it's 8 vs. 50, you're going to see some much bigger stats and other funky stuff in order to keep the difficulty appropriately high. Funky stuff leads directly to more chances for confusion or bad decisions. I'd call it a wash.
 
Most times where i have seen large amounts of rezzing has been due to a lack of organization. What causes that lacking can be anything from bad communication to being caught by surprise, but it still does lead to death. I dont see that as bad except in the case where the bad communication comes from information not being propperly passed along to the players (not characters).. ie there is some sort of misunderstanding about the mechanics or boundaries of a scenario. I can think of one battle where i dont think it was made clear that the PCs could / were allowed to run away, so they fought to the end thinking escape was not an option. In that case i dont think the large amount of deaths was acceptable. However if they had known they could escape and they chose to stay and fight to the dieing end, then all the power to them.

Some people will always be upset about resurrections, others understand its part of the game... the more people who die in a given fight the higher probability that someone among that group will have their feelings hurt, but I dont think that we should taper the level of danger to ensure that large amounts of resurrections dont occur. Sometimes it happens and so long as the reasons for it are completely IG, I think it is fine.
 
Talen, isn't it true though that when there were 200-300 player events larp was a much newer 'type' of game and there were less larp's out there to play? Since then there are literally dozens of different types of larps and it always seems like starting a 'fresh' larp gets people excited, even if historically something like that does not always work out at all.

It is certainly a good point and I would agree that magic items and more build ext ext give you more 'chances' and mean you can get farther 'in the hole' and still pull yourselves out of a mess. But ultimately it still seems like knowing the system, and having good tactics/organization is more of an affecter than sheer magic items in determining that people live or die.

Davian I'm well aware of the specific details for the fight last Friday, I just brought it up because it seemed like an example of where without teamwork and a few good leadership individuals things can crumble away and people die pretty fast.
 
Dan Nickname Beshers said:
Mike

Firefly is your quoted movie.

I'd disagree with only one thing. Number of NPCs doesn't change the deadliness of a wave battle, if it's being scaled well. Actually, it allows more room for error: body, damage and lives is an acceptable stat card if you have 20 NPCs challenging 30 players. If it's 8 vs. 50, you're going to see some much bigger stats and other funky stuff in order to keep the difficulty appropriately high. Funky stuff leads directly to more chances for confusion or bad decisions. I'd call it a wash.
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I can only call on experience. In my experience, weekends with high number of NPCs often lead to a high number of deaths (especially in wave battles) even when scaled lightly. In fact, I distinctly remember a fight that was nothing but orcs, ogres, and trolls (nothing special, just base whackers) that ravaged the game, in part because the ratio was very close to 1:1.

Special abilities are cool, but when they are all on a small number of people, it is hard to pound them out before getting dog piled. When the physical numbers are a lot closer, every NPC is likely to be more meaningfully effective because match ups are more even and damage gets spread more evenly across the NPCs. Also, in wave battles (especially popcorn style), there is less opportunity for PCs to "take a breather" when there are more NPCs present.

I can accept that your experiences may differ. But, in HQ where the average game right now is ~50 players with APL 17, I think a wave battle with 40 Stone Trolls and 10 Trolls with 7th level caster stats (no 9th level spells) would be significantly more frightening than a wave battle with 12 Dread Lord Perceptors (w/ 15 fighter levels) and 3 Liches (w/ 15 caster levels), despite the fact that the first one is SEVERELY under statted.

-MS
 
I'd actually tend to agree with you that attrition by numbers can be pretty rough; my point is that with the 15 NPCs all statted at APL 30+, individual effort and skill and luck all have a bigger impact. One Preceptor who's really on their game can make a huge difference with some well executed tactics; a single stone troll is a lot less of a problem. If one of the lichs has a really good arm, quick thinking on their part can turn a small cave-in on a line into 5-6 PCs created and quickly ticking down towards circle time. Conversely, if one of your three lichs drops the ball and gets gooned lickity-quick, it can really swing the tide of battle the other way too.

So to sum up: smaller numbers with larger stat cards amplify individual success/failure, which is (in my experience) one of the ways in which statting can seem to go awry.
 
In my experience three things account for how likely a given group of PCs is to resurrect more than anything else:

1. How well the players are prepared for the encounter

2. How well plot takes variables into account when scaling the encounter

3. How closely the marshals are watching

1 and 2 have been discussed pretty thoroughly. 3 is the one no one really wants to mention, and should be pretty self explanatory.
 
Number of npcs does make a pretty big difference. Chicago has seen it more thaf once where a monster that should be a scary fight just gets cornered and.circle beaten because it simply doesn't have the defenses to take 5-6 players worth of activates in a row.

Add in 3-4 'lieutenants' big enough to be nasty if ignored, and it becomes a whole different fight.
 
Winter Rust. I have noticed that the Off-Season causes resurrections. People forget: the speed of the game, their stat cards and some positive tactics they have developed.

Scaling. I have seen a ton of resurrections that are entirely the fault of monster desk. Especially when the person(s) at monster desk do not PC ever. Not knowing the game and sending monsters out (without instructions/that the PCs can't handle) causes most resurrections.

Poor PC tactics. Sometimes PCs are lazy and expect to win the fight. They can easily win because of: superior numbers, magic items, better weapons, access to production, etc, etc, but they enter battle without any desire to win. On the East Coast most often towns start to work together after a particularly costly defeat. Some PCs are greedy and would rather go for treasure than work together.

NPCs who cheat. Some NPCs don't know the rules. Some NPCs don't care about the rules. This causes resurrections.

Marshals. Sometimes a marshal isn't paying attention because there is a thousand things happening in front of them. Sometimes marshals are taking pictures instead of watching the fight. Sometimes there aren't enough marshals.

To prevent resurrections a lot of things have to happen. Such as practice in the off-season, appropriate scaling, Good PC tactics, Good/Fair NPCs, more Marshals.

Some people want to see a game where there are a lot of resurrections and high PC turnover. Some people want to see a game where the entire purpose of coming to an event isn't just to resurrect. I think we have both (at least on the East Coast). There is a long list of permanently dead characters and a long list of veteran chapter-hoppers. PCs who don't want to resurrect will often form teams, play conservatively/cowardly, amass resources/stuff quest and try not to mouth-off to every bad guy they encounter. Keeping a low-profile and paying attention during fights is better than being a big mouth who gets tunnel vision.

-Brian Bender
 
Air Raksa said:
NPCs who cheat. Some NPCs don't know the rules. Some NPCs don't care about the rules. This causes resurrections.
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Unfortunately, NPCs don't have the market cornered on these things. In the case of PCs, the same factors tend to combine to prevent resurrections.
 
Air Raksa said:
Yes. Absolutely. I did not mean to imply otherwise.
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I didn't mean to imply that you did; I was just restating it explicitly. Sorry for the confusion. :oops:
 
Cheating/Marshals is one of the few points raised that I think has the least effect on resurrections. Oh, yes, a dedicated cheater will cause or prevent resurrections, but dedicated cheaters are thankfully few and far between.

Other than that, every single player who has played more than one game has cheated. I don't mean intentionally cheating. I just mean has broken the rules (probably unintentionally). Personally, I cheat about once per game. Never intentionally, but it happens because I am not perfect. Whenever I recognize the fact, I try to make amends if possible and if meaningful.

For example, last game on one of my cards, I had Magic Ice Storm 3/life. For some reason I thought I had 20 Elemental Ice 3/life. I screwed up every single life. The damage was lower, but I popped elemental shields instead of spell shields. It was sorta a wash and there really wasn't anything I could do by the time I noticed. But, I will be much more cognizant of that NPC card in the future.

In short, cheating is rampant. Intentional cheating, thankfully isn't. Since cheating occurs on both sides regularly, it sort of washes. Also, because it is unintentional, it tends to help and hinder about equally (ask Eric about when he was entangled but thought he was paralyzed).

-MS
 
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