Talk:Failure is not the End (3.5e Variant Rule)

All your consequences seem geared toward TPKs

Yes, I know that making consequences for the non-death of a single player character is hard, which is why you, as the creator of this variant rule, should do the work to suggest some that make sense. You clearly don't support a "single dead characters survive unless abandoned" route, because abandonment can be done by players other than that PC's controller. But if the character(s) are abandoned and don't die, now the party is split and the DM has to somehow run two games.

For the highly indecisive TGDMB view on this topic, read this thread and this one. --Foxwarrior 20:02, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Fix'd, thanks for reminding me. Meant for the consequences to be examples of what happens when the whole party dies.

Just skimming the two posts you wrote up, but let's actually look at the numbers on the first post of the first thread you linked.

TPK once every 50 campaigns is the premise. Let's assume a campaign goes from level 1-10, and you need 10 combats on average to gain a level. This means on average that the entire party is supposed to die once every 5,000 combats. A 0.02% chance of something happening is so miniscule that it might not as well be there IMO, so the argument is fairly non-sensical. The second part is that the people discussing don't seem to realize that non-death threats can be very threatening and can have great impact on the characters, shattering and breaking some and strengthening the resolve of others. It's like they assume that death is the only way to truly threaten a party, and I have to disagree with that.

(Preface the following with IMO:) The game is about having fun. The DM's job is to make sure that people are having fun. Death is not fun. Completely disrupting the story isn't fun. Losing one's character, who one is emotionally invested and attached to isn't fun. Momentary setbacks can be fun. Opportunities for RP can be fun. Heroic sacrifice and meaningful deaths that are part of the story are fun. Random death is not. Having your character taken away from you is not. --Ghostwheel 21:12, 23 May 2012 (UTC)