To summarize, each participating PC would have a limited number of respawns for a given situation/event/time, after which they could no longer join in. You could theoretically wipe out an enemy force, and win the day. Or be wiped out, yourself. (This has nothing to do with PC death by monsters or any mechanical penalties related to it!)

Discussions of PC death will be had to death (lolol) and that's simply how it is. New players come in, we discuss it again, we reassess our footing and check the climate and fire out where stand. It's a natural course of a community like this, so what I don't want to do is declare how things should or should not be run; but offer some thoughts I've been having and talking about with others.

A particular topic is one of impact - how can there be any when PCs are essentially immortal? Wars of attrition will wage on until either the DMs conclude it (in the case of an event, particularly) or until the players get bored. How can Good or Evil (or Neutral!) effect the world when everything returns to factory settings every reset, so on and so forth.

I'm against permadeath, by the way. By that, I mean that it should be the choice of the player to decide when to retire their character - people put a lot of hours of time - real, actual hours of their life time - into building these characters and it's a kick in the balls to have all of that lost because you didn't power build, your router decided to hiccup, the server lagged out at a critical moment, or you were just unlucky. I think there is an easily attained balance between challenge and having fun and it shouldn't be a second job. I put this in small text for a reason to give insight as to where I am coming from, but I don't intend for it to be a focal point of the topic.

I also think there can be a balance in how removal of a PCs influence can be attained without having to either struggle in the constant back-and-forth with no ground able to be kept with endlessly returning characters, and with permanent death.

The suggestion itself, after all that, is pretty simple: PCs have a finite lifespan for a particular event. With DM events this could even be moderated (a weightless, undroppable token could be placed in a PCs inventory to mark them as having been "tagged out"!) and the level of leniency is full of options from one-death-and-your-out to a three-strikes system or whatever might be appropriate. But the general premise is that once a PC was slain or reached their given "allowance", they would not be permitted to return to the event/conflict until either the event was over or the DM said otherwise.

(How might it work IC? This could be reflected by a variety of things, but what I had been discussing was that even if there is no mechanical system for a soul "fatiguing" from being called back, one's patron god could decide they were tired of their power-via-worshiper fluctuating and place a Geas on the PC to not become involved in what caused their demise - or, perhaps, the enemy's patron god does this. This is also in small text because it's not crucial to the overall idea and would vary with need/situation, I imagine.)

I think there could also be a place for this in the various "Gentleman's Agreements" made between players. Assassinations, blood feuds, player-run faction battles and so forth could work out their own terms of engagement not entirely unlike picking terms for a capture the flag game, or whatever analogy. It could also encourage all manner of RP, IC scheming and planning, alliances made and betrayed - logistics and trade could become a real factor - and being able to bring some sense of closure by the end of it, between players.

This wouldn't be appropriate for server-changing things like trying to once and for all clear out the Orc Caves, or whathaveyou - the Devs would spend all their time changing those Areas and it'd be essentially the same problem in the other extreme direction. We need those areas, and it's easy enough to come up with excuses about the prodigious breeding or reinforcements of the monsters. This would be a thing between players, or between players with DMs for events.

This isn't a "check out what a genius I am, you should implement this now because I am awesome" post - it's just an idea I was rolling around and figured I'd present to see if others might be interested, and what kind of discussion might come from it.

I think that's everything... I probably left out something critical. Hm.

I'm for such things, but hasn't this been tried and shot down several times now?

I like the general idea as it would make wars more like.. well wars. But (there always is one, isn't there) one problem I forsee is the implementation, how on earth are you going to mark an "out" player or for that sake how many strikes somebody has. Dms would be hard pressed to constantly keep an eye on how many clashes one group has with another one, not to mention there are going to be times when no dms are on.

In short I am not sure how it could be implemented mechanically, though if you could get the gentelmans agreement to work between players that be a great step forward for the entire server. That however lies entirely in the hands of the players to make that change.

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- Rousseau Book 1 Chapter 9 in "The Social Contract"

I thought respawning to rejoin an event or fight was not allowed anyway .

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Remember when I knew a boxer, baby

Love this idea and i would love if the dm team could take thia suggestion to heart and perhaps even give it a trial week

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I really only see this working for DM-moderated events, meaning at most a 4-6 hour period. So you can only respawn once during the reset, for example. Unless you're suggesting that 'one respawn per RL day' or some such be implemented mechanically, which I doubt will fly, given that none of the other 'death penalties' ever have.

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That's generally for like...one fight. A whole event that takes place over weeks or months is different.

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Aly'dra Zau'ana: Priestessish Of Eilistraee
Danika Nefzen: Druid of the Earthmother
Delia Am'Anodel: Paladin of Torm

A lot of it would be very honor-system style. Also, if implemented outside if a DM event, wouldn't this effect the whole 'you can totally ignore death as a K.O.' Thing?

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Eli Hodgewall <{/,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~X
Sven <=={o===========>
Qeelak \ | / ,

I support this in spirit, but in general, fewer and simpler rules are better when you're dealing with cat herding. I'd make it something like: 'If you are killed and raised during an event you must leave the area to 'recuperate' in a faction area and can't leave until the fighting is over.' That way people can still be doing stuff that advances the story/event - talking to other casualties, providing information, etc - while their death can have an IC impact in that they're taken out of the fight.

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You dare mock the Tibbly one, catcherer of drowses?

We don't need this... at least, not as outlined in the post. We can (and do.) enforce this as needed on a case by case basis... and we surely don't need to publicize our rationale, system, or methods, because then you'd know too much and would abuse it like I've seen people do when we've done it in the past. Players have proved they need to b kept in the dark about it and that's why you don't see token dropped or etc. Because a player shouldn't have the knowledge that "oh, gosh, I have 2 more lives left in this event." No. They should play with the idea that if they die, THAT COULD BE IT. You literally never know when we may spring it on you.

Kudos for noticing that we do it and calling attention to it, though.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Who cares? God forbid you die if you die, and god forbid we make it mean something. We're DMs. It doesn't matter if it affects it, because if we say you died, you died.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

I should clarify a couple things:

- This isn't about the death itself so much as the, "welp, because you were caught in a moment of weakness (such as, say, dying or being knocked unconscious) X force took advantage of that to (somehow) prohibit you from returning to the battlefield."

- It's not about mechanics at all. The mention of tokens was simply for a physical reminder for DM and Player alike that X PC is not allowed back to X event for X duration/until the end of it. Even if something like tokens were used, it wouldn't be appropriate for them to be automatically added by a script.

- Whether or not the player is aware of that method or how many "respawns" they might be allotted for the event is sort of a peripheral thing that would be factored as case by case, I imagine, not as the heart of the idea.

- I'm also not using the term "respawn" in the die-get-raised mechanical way as much as I am for a quantifier of limited access. Respawn as in you have X tickets to gain access to X event.

I hope that's more clear!

For long-term events it's where I imagine the impact would be most visible. Between a handful of PCs having a scuffle, it's not as if it would really change standard PvP rules such as the killer decides the state of the victim (whether they are knocked out or actually dead). It's also someone that, hypothetically, everyone involve would have agreed to so they are all in on the terms of if they can rejoin the fight even after being Raised, or if being knocked out doesn't count against their "respawn". That's all details that people would decide amongst themselves.

True fact they have this button that can end you with as little fanfare as possible, I know it well, this button.

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"I'm going to spend all my money on ale and whores." "Okay roll for whores." "That's 1d4 whores right?"