This suggestion is prompted by Luke's question in the DM Q&A Forum.

The Suggestion: I would like to see experience debt replace experience loss. This would work by linking the debt to the character token which every character possesses. When you die and respawn (or are raised / resurrected), instead of "losing" experience it is transferred into a "debt pool". Additional penalties will be explained below. The pool will grow each time you die, and in order to advance and/or eliminate penalties you must eliminate the experience debt.

When you go out to gain experience, instead of the XP being added to your character sheet, it is subtracted from the debt pool until it is zero. After it is eliminated all penalties disappear and you advance normally until you die again.

To explain, let us say you are 4th level and have 6,000 Experience Points. Under the current system, if you were to die you'd lose 1,800 XP and your level. Under the new system instead of losing 1,800 XP it would be added to a debt pool linked to your character token. If you were to die again immediately after respawning, another 1,800 XP would be added to your debt pool bringing your debt to 3,600 Experience Debt. In order to advance to 5th level, you must first avoid dying and work off the 3,600 Experience Debt, after which you would be able to earn experience normally.

In essence, this system is preventing level loss while both maintaining and increasing the penalty for death. A single death results in the same amount of XP "debt", but each cumulative death - while you are still in "debt" increases the penalty for death.

Finally, there needs to be additional penalties that make sense other than just an experience debt. I propose the following:

Each time you die you receive -1 to Constitution and -1 to all Saves, which would be cumulative. There would be two ways to remove this penalty. First is to receive a raise or be resurrected, if you select this method of coming back then you do not receive the penalty (although you receive the experience debt as per normal). Second, the penalty fades with time (you can think of this as "recovery") which lasts for 1d48 hours - which is the amount of time you must be online "recovering". Such counters already exist for the jail. Finally, the penalty is completely removed once the Experience Debt is removed. One of these conditions must be met in order to have the penalty removed.

If at any time a character reaches zero Constitution, then he or she may only be brought back via a Raise Dead or Resurrection spell.

The thinking behind the suggestion: I have a problem with the way the penalties for death is handled in D&D. I feel that it goes against common sense and role-play. However, at the same time I also feel that the penalty for death on EfU is not strong enough. I feel that there needs to be a better way and a method to reconcile these two things, and to that end I have put forward the above suggestion.

First, I do not believe death should be a punishment. We are playing a game and games should be fun. Dying in EfU is not fun. Ever. I am not talking about PvP deaths here; I am talking about quest related deaths. There is so much that EfU has to offer, and there is so much work put into it by DMs and yet not even half of what is out there is seen or explored by players. Why? Death.

In my eyes, dying should be a consequence or a penalty. Not a punishment. When you die during a quest, in most cases it is not even considered a real death because you can respawn. It is the equivalent of a near-death experience. You see the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and you hear the voice of the Priest of Kelemvor telling you to go back. Then your soul is sucked back into its body.

Yet, some how... unexplainably... you lose knowledge. Thirty seconds before, your slaving character had just achieved 6th level. He had just taken the Exotic Weapon feat, allowing him to use a whip on his slaves. He was doing just that, forcing them to fight a group of Gnolls, when one came up behind him and got a lucky critical hit. Now, suddenly, somehow, despite having learned how to use exotic weapons and previously wielding a whip, that is no longer possible.

Thirty seconds ago, your 5th level wizard was hurling fireballs. You were teaching those damn kobold archers a lesson, when one of them got lucky, turned his crossbow on you, and got a critical hit. You died. Now, somehow - magically - the Fireball Spell is gone from your spellbook.

These things cannot be explained away without tortured logic, and in general detracts from a character and the role-playing experience because frankly - they do not make sense. This happens all the time, everyday. It is glossed over and swept under the rug, and so everyone moves forward as if nothing happened, because no one has any idea how to properly play out such a scenario without devolving into ridiculousness.

This is on top of the OOC arguments that can potentially arise, the OOC frustrations that manifest in people, and the awkwardness you have to sometimes deal with in tells when someone who is upset over a death is undecided over whether or not it is worth respawning or simply having their character die.

Gods forbid if there is DM Spice. I love spice on my quests, and some of the most memorable moments I have had on EfU evolved around DM spice. Yet, at the same time, nothing can ruin my playing session faster than being grouped with someone who resorts to OOC bitching during a DM spiced quest, especially if it is at the DM. If I am grouped with such a person, I would rather not have any spice at all.

Have you looked around the server and seen all the potentially awesome scripted quests? Good luck in finding a group to go with you on them. Most people do not want to risk dying.

Some may say that this is a good thing. I do not see it that way. Fundamentally, I believe everyone should have fun and death is not fun because it is a punishment.

The system I proposed should ensure that death is even harsher than before, but instead of a punishment it becomes a consequence of your actions, a penalty. The sting and negativity is removed with the level loss, thus negating the feeling that all of your hard work has been wasted as a result of an unlucky roll of the dice, a miss click or a stupid mistake.

Now these are the benefits and disadvantages in my eyes.

Benefits: The primary benefit in my eyes is less OOC problems as a result of death. People will not take it as badly, though it will remain a significant setback for their character.

However, perhaps the most important, the penalties for death make sense. XP is completely an OOC concept, but the penalties to Constitution and Saves make sense as they reflect the injuries a character has sustained as a result of a near death experience. They can actually be role-played out. You can actually role-play a character recovering from a near-death experience and have your character sheet reflect that experience.

On top of that, it will be easier to coax players out to do the harder quests – the ones that everyone knows will result in at least one, if not multiple character deaths. Certain players will also become less agitated if they see DM Spice, and less likely to view it as punishment. They might even have (gasp) fun.

Finally, the system while harsher than before, also manages to accommodate new players. While it keeps the penalty in death (even increasing it) by removing the level loss it manages to appear (even though it is not) as less severe.

Disadvantages: There could be fewer lower levels running around, because there will no longer be a tide of unlucky higher level characters who have died trying to level back up.

There would be more people willing to take risks. This may not be a disadvantage depending on your point of view, but it is something that I believe is situational.

The appearance and horrible experience of dying will be lessened. Some people actually enjoy this, but I feel that the majority do not enjoy it.

I hope that this will at the very least ignite an interesting debate and discussion on a way to improve the server. I know this is a controversial topic, but I hope everyone will at least take the time to consider the suggestion.

I see a problem, You hit level 8 or 9, You don't really care if you get any higher. So you can basically play as recklessly as you want because XP is nothing you need/want anymore.

First of all, I have a question for you: Did you write that up under the direction of an English professor, spending hours and hours upon the suggestion? Because it's good, well thought-out, and very thorough. Kudos.

As for the suggestion, I love it. I can see how the Nazi Pokemon's problem would be a problem, however. In fact, I'm not sure how to remedy that. However, that ridiculous drop from nine to seven, or nearly eight to five hundred xp into six stinks. I mean stinks. I know all the old arguments about how a character should have a group by then, and friends to help him get back on his feet. They're true, spot on and all that. However, that does not lessen the pain of having spent two weeks getting closer than you ever have to level eight, and having it snatched away because you didn't know how to get to Sanctuary from the Spire. (I should have just logged out and waited for a reset... moron me) This would not take away that which a player has earned through many hard (and enjoyable) hours of questing with his faction, and having tons of fun on DM quests, but merely put up another obstacle for gaining that next level. It just makes the hurdles higher, instead of putting another one in the way, or another two or three for that matter.

IMO, this suggestion is great, but does need some tweaking for those high levels. Perhaps reinstate the xp penalty for eight and higher?

The system is fine as it is.

I noticed that problem as well, which is why I introduced the penalties to work with the experience debt. Although they fade with time, higher level characters will more likely face PvP challenges.

Additionally, there is the lure of possibly obtaining 10th level or even 11th, and there is at least one quest that can take you as high as 12th level. Not to mention the harder and higher level quests come with increased rewards, so there is that lure as well.

That being said, it should also be harder to achieve higher levels. Let me explain, and this is where death becomes worse than the current system.

In our current system, let us say you are 9th level. You have 36,000 XP. You die. You lose 10,800 XP, and end up half way through level seven.

In the system I proposed you will incur a 10,800 Experience Debt, a -1 to your CON (which - if you have 14 CON, knocks you down to 13 CON which translates to -9 HP) and -1 to your Will Save, Fortitude Save, and Reflex Save.

Now let's say you die a second time, after working your way down to 8,600 XP Debt. Now, suddenly, as a result of your second death, you are now 19,400 XP in Debt, and have a -2 to your CON, and -2 to all of your Saves. This is the equivalent of trying to level all the way from level 1 to level 7 again.

However, here is the crippling part: You will be gaining XP as a level 9. Where as in the past you would have fallen back down in level, and a wider range of quests open up to you, suddenly you are forced into doing only quests a level 9 can do and if you want to actually gain a decent amount of experience you have to do the dangerous ones. Of course, the dangerous ones increase your risk of death and hence more penalties.

It is this way throughout the entire level spectrum. If you die at level 4 or 5 in the past you could do a bunch of low level quests which have high gold and XP rewards. No longer. You will continue to earn XP as a level 5, with penalties, and forced into doing quests only a level 5 can do. On top of that each subsequent death leads you deeper into the hole with accumulating penalties.

Overall, I do believe that people will be more reckless, but that recklessness will have a limit. Especially considering that you reach a point where you virtually have the HP equivalent of a wet paper bag and will be forced into resting for potentially a number of real life weeks. Alternatively, you could reach zero Constitution and be permakilled and only be able to come back through someone taking your body to be raised or resurrected.

The main bug in this I haven't seen all ready is that the ammount of scripting it will take, and some may feel like 'WHAT?! You get THAT but I lost x amount of XP!? THAT'S REDICULOUS' for a while, but all in all, I support this idea. Also, the XP debt idea is similar to the one in City of Heroes, good thinking.

Yes, this will make it take a little longer to level up. However, this will cause the 7s, 8s, and 9s to linger around FOREVER. There are a number of both players and DMs that feel there are too many high level characters that stick around "in wait" already. It's an interesting suggestion, but I will be quite surprised if it goes anywhere.

Whoa. After seeing that side of it Maldread, you can take your idea and hide it in the middle of a volcano. I don't even want to think about it. *shivers*

So many arguments for, and I stopped reading after two paragraphs. <.< Entirely opposed to this suggestion, primarily for the reason ExileStrife brought up.

Over my dead body.

*after reading DM responses*

You're entitled to your own oppinions, nothing wrong with that. If the DMs don't like a major mechanics change, I won't push the issue.

ExileStrife Yes, this will make it take a little longer to level up. However, this will cause the 7s, 8s, and 9s to linger around FOREVER. There are a number of both players and DMs that feel there are too many high level characters that stick around "in wait" already. It's an interesting suggestion, but I will be quite surprised if it goes anywhere.

I really like the idea.

In a situation where DMs feel that there are too many high level characters that stick around--well, you're the DMs you can fix this easily.

I'd start by approaching those high level players and discussing retirement of their character. Sure its a bit more effort, but that's part of the joy of DMing--ensuring you can give high level characters a memorable "off-stage" shove.

Perhaps, what should happen is that the system Meldread is suggesting only can carry you up to an "average" server level. After that, the system stops and death carries into a normal manner of you are dead and need to get raised to avoid losing a level or two.

I'll admit, I don't mind death taking me back to the start of the level I'm at currently. I do hate death taking me back to my last level. It is wretched to watch a feat or a spell level just disappear.

Then again, one problem that Meldread hasn't considered is that I could earn a -50,000 XP penalty with my perpetual level 5 character. There would have to be some cut off point somewhere.

Actually, if you think about it, repaying this debt without the level loss means your 8th level character can continue doing those big XP quest and have them paid back in no time. So it wouldn’t really be as harsh as compared to being dumped back down to 6th level at all. Although it probably would keep people from farming those lost XP.

Thomas is wise: Say, when are the DM's going to start thinning out the level 7-10's on this server?! Sternhund: We're planning to.

I am against this idea. To many high levels, and people won't actually work past level 9, cause you're epic then

Actually, strangely enough ExileStrife, I disagree. I think overall the number of 7's, 8's and 9's will remain the same or perhaps decrease slightly. It may seem intuitive on the face of it, but those who make the higher levels and seem to stick around forever do so because they refuse to go on quests. They do not want to risk dying and losing their level.

Under my proposed system, these individuals may be persuaded to actually leave the city and take a few more risks. This also opens them up to being PvPed in the Underdark or Lower and permakilled as a result, whereas typically these types of characters tend to stick around or close to Upper Sanctuary or cling to highly familiar groups when traveling. The chances that such individuals will interact with new people via questing increases, which in turn lends itself to the chances that they could make enemies or alternatively be lured into a trap. All of which increases the chances that they will be killed.

It may lead to a slightly increased number of level 6's and 7's but over all I feel the average level will remain 5th. The reason I feel this way is because of the design of the system.

To understand what I am proposing you really have to picture how it will play out in your minds eye.

The system has two primary components the XP Debt and the Penalty. To get rid of the XP Debt, as I described above, takes more time than it would to recover from a death in the current system.

For a level five the XP Debt is going to be anywhere from 3,000 to 4,500 each time you die. This is cumulative on top of the debt you already have, and to make matters worse you have to erase this debt as a level five character. To put this in prospective, 4,500 XP is almost the equivalent of leveling from 1st to 4th level.

If you factor in that the fear of death will be lessened due to the lack of level loss, and as a result of that people will take more risks, then that increases the chances that they could die. This in turn increases the amount of XP Debt a character could incur.

Let's say we have a fictional level five character who has 12,500 XP. He dies and gains a 3,750 XP Debt. He then manages to work that Debt down to 3,000 XP before he dies again, which on top of that is another 3,750 XP added to his debt, bringing him to 6,750 XP Debt. That is more XP than it takes to level from 1st level to 4th level. A third death while trying to remove that debt could lead to roughly 8,750 XP Debt.

For this character to get to 6th level he has to gain 11,250 XP without dying and gaining more debt. This is literally more XP than it takes to level from 1st to 5th level. How common is it for a 5th level to die three times on EfU, if you include the fact that a 5th level character is also taking more risks?

Overall it has taken our fictional character 16,250 XP to obtain 6th level. That is more XP than it takes to level from 1st to 6th without dying, and this character had to do it as a 5th level character earning only the amount of XP a 5th level could earn.

Additionally, during this time our fictional character has likely endured -3 CON (which most likely translates to -10 HP) and a -3 to all Saves. This also increases the chances of this character dying and incurring even more XP Debt.

Let me try and put the Penalty aspect in prospective. A level five Wizard with 14 CON has just died three times and has a -3 to his Constitution. He has gone from 30 to 20 HP. If he dies twice more, a real possibility, he could be reduced down to 15 HP. This high CON Wizard had the same amount of HP at level three. At the same time this character likely also has negatives in all of his saves.

Let us assume we have a Cleric with 14 CON giving him 50 HP at level five. If he ends up in the same position as the Wizard then this will reduce him down to 35 HP, and likely negative in all saves as well.

Now try and understand how long it takes for the above penalties to fade. Under this system each time you die you roll 1d48 to determine how long it takes for your character to recover from his near death experience. Let us say you play an average of 5 hours per night, a bit on the higher end I suspect. Now let us assume you have died and rolled a 24. It will take you five playing sessions, or five real life days, for this penalty to fade. Now lets say you die again during this time, and roll a 42 this penalty will remain with you nine playing sessions or nine days. If you were to roll a 48, the maximum amount of time, it will take you ten playing sessions or ten days for the penalty to fade away.

All of the above assumes that you are playing on average roughly 5 hours per day, if you play less it will take even longer. How many times does the average player, in ten playing sessions, expose himself to danger? How many times does the average player risk accumulative penalties? I would wager that for most players risk themselves multiple times during that period.

In those cases, it makes them more vulnerable to death not only during questing periods but also in times of PvP due to the lack of HP and the weakened saving throws.

Oroborous-

I considered that as well, but after thinking about it I decided that it wasn't that bad. In order for a level 5 to accumulate 50,000 XP Debt he would have had to have 14,999 XP (1XP away from 6th level) and have died 12 times in a row.

Overall, I don't see a problem with someone never working their way out of level 5 because they died so many times. Under the current system, if they were that unlucky, it is unlikely that they would have been able to maintain a level of 5 for any length of time.

I was looking for a balance between consequence and punishment, and I wanted it to make sense role-play wise. I feel that this is the best system to achieve that.

I wish people would make alternative suggestions if they don't like my proposal. I think it will be more beneficial to the discussion, as I believe that the majority of players on the server feel that the current system is inadequate in one way or another.

That was my primary hope in making the thread, I wanted to create a discussion to get people to put forward alternative ideas and ways that the current system can either be changed or improved.

Well, one way I can think of improving this is if there was a way to remove the debt in another way other then heavy questing and/or time. A form of divine clensing or such in a temple would suit this, in RP, it'd be like meditation helping you come to terms with it. OOCly, it'd be a way of getting back into the play.

Of course there'd have to be a cost, like gold as a 'donation' to the temple/church. Of course you'd have to do the 'meditate' for a while (which basically paralizes your character in a meditive position for a while, breakible if combat begins of course so you aren't hit by a cheap-shot). This would essensially allow players willing to trade gold to recover from death, a different death penalty, if you understand what I'm saying.

However, if the DMs don't want it, I won't push the issue in that manner, I'd just bring up suggestions that could make it better, possibly for a diff role-play server. For all we know, this could be contributing to someones new RP server that needs a good DP.

In favor of.

I like this idea, but I doubt it'll see the light of day on EfU.

Interesting idea, but I don't think it'll actually get rid of high level PCs instead of merely slowing down their level progression.

I am surprised none of you have pointed out how completely miserable this would make EfU for less-skilled, newer, lower-level players! The server is hard enough as it is--the illusion of "lessened" penalties would quickly fade when people realize how much more devastating the penalties actually are.

That being said, this "hardcore realism" fad is so last year.

On an unrelated note, I'd like to remind everyone here that electing to decide which higher-level characters are "pointless" and have reached the end of their stories is a very, very dangerous and slippery slope. Level is a measure of character growth, but its ultimate impact on the ending of a character's story is quite minimal. Characters who reach the higher levels can indeed have great stories left in them; characters who never do reach the high levels can also have terrific stories without ever crossing L6 (for any length of time, anyway).

It's always been stated that EfU is a server that focuses on great stories, but the decision about when to end a PC's story should always be primarily left up to players-not forced upon them DMs. (I'm not saying that DMs shouldn't enforce permadeath upon quests, when involved in PvP, or the like--absolutely they should. I simply think that DMs approaching players and telling them that their PCs need to go because they're too high level and not doing enough is a very bad idea. Likewise, aiming to kill these PCs off simply because they appear to be "treading water" is also a very bad idea.)

-SI

Starry Ice, that was a very thought out, very concise and serious post. I think you hit the nail on the head.

What have you done with the real Starry Ice, sir?

I like it, and think having it be an optional thing for any who desire it would make it a lot more worth considering.

That is, those who desire to work on XP debt over level, may have it.

Like, y'know... abortions for some, for others, tiny plastic american flags.

Make it optional. Then I'll say yes.

Otherwise, no.

You guys want me to die, I see how it is.

Howland, how can you say such? After all, you only killed at least ONE of characters at least one time.

I'm going to stand behind Si on this one. (that and I don't want Howland to die. ;))

Starry Ice has the truth of it.

Apocalypse is upon us.

At least Howland gets to live.

In all seriousness, however, I consider the current 'penalty' for death to be severely crippling and insanely soul-crushing for a reason. Dying is bad. It's just... Bad. Consider that when you discuss deaths in quests, Meldread, that no quests on EfU are improperly balanced so as to cause party wipes or total onslaught of the PCs involved. 90% of the times I've died in quests, it was my own damn fault for not using potions, buying healing, or picking the right people to quest with. The other 10% is the luck of the dice, and that just happens.

Entirely and completely opposed to this idea, especially the -1 Constitution and such. The current death system is fine as it is, and the answer is to simply stop dying. Take your proficiency feats earlier.

I didn't read the whole deal after the first 3-4 posts, so apologies if someone else mentioned this. But you mean make our death system exactly the same as Everquest 2?

Christ no, no, never ack gods no. Let's not strive to make EfU closer to a grindfest MMO please. Death penalty is fine, not harsh enough even.

My inner MMO'er cries out for the implementation of this, but my reason dictates the opposite.

The current death system is good. Though, 'not hard enough' is a bit of an exaggeration in the L.I.S book.

Make it harder, lol.

First off, the posts may be long, but if you are going to post a serious reply, then you owe it to the OP to read and consider them.

I've decided that I kind of like this idea. This is for the following reasons:

(1) It reduces what IMO is one of the hardest things to effectively roleplay, the loss of skills/spells/abilities/feats. No longer does the leader of the group die on a hard quest and the next day ends up delivering pies, yet still dishing out orders and running the group.

(2) People may be able to get to higher levels than before, but the number representing the character level carries less meaning. That is, your level number and your ability become slightly detached. I argue that's a good thing, since it adds some realism. It also reduces the ability for players to metagame levels. Eg. If a high level character has died many times in debt, then they may be much weaker than you would expect.

(3) Along the lines of Pt. 2, its not clear to me that this makes the server any easier.

Players new or old would adapt to the system just like they would any system. No one would force you to retire your PC, it would just become increasingly hard to recover. Maybe set a threshold, like once you reach Con 6 and saves 0, then you no longer get penalties, just the debt continues to increase. That way there is no hard cut-off.

I'm opposed to this idea.

I have a good alternative though: increase respawn penalty to 50% XP, raise to 33% and ressurection to 25%.

Oh, and add an (optional) hardcore mode that gives you no benefits whatsoever except for making it impossible to use respawn.

[Jokes aside - I'm one of these persons who's very easily tempted to grind. This idea would make grinding easier for me. The harsh XP penalties are good in that they prevent me from giving in to grinding urges and instead do some MFing RP and plot, yo. Keep everything as it is. If at all, just make the XP penalty higher or something.]

I'm amused at this discourse. I remember back in the day when it was a standard course of action that at each death you lost a point of CON - that's just how it was. XP can be regained - that never seemed to daunt my PnP players, but oh how they feared those losses of CON. I know this is going nowhere as a thread, but I would also be in favor of a modified death system - it never made sense to me either why you suddenly lost knoweldge as a result of dying. Temporary but severe physical and mental mental weakness make perfect sense, as does a long term permanent loss of some kind. Eventually, if you die enough times, you will be so nerfed that you are unplayable as a character, no matter what your level might be: I'm a 10th level fighter with 50 HP and -1 to hit and damage because my CON and STR are so low - not as much of a threat now!

I don't know if I'm in favor of the debt pool, though. A lesser XP penalty would simulate some psychic shock, though, as would a script that would prevent you from being healed except through natural rest after a respawn - THAT would put the fear of death into a guy. Too many times have I seen respawns jump up and return to the fight after a liberal application of healing spells.

.... :shock:

.... :roll:

....: :lol: