I agree with this. While there are times when I miss the lethality of 3.5 D&D, the reality was that in that rule set death generally just meant a level lost. In Arcanis if you actually die, you are gone. For the vast majority of us who have spent years playing the same character, having a character permanently gone is a very bitter pill to swallow. Not that it should never happen, but I don't think it should become common.


I really like this idea, as well as the other ones you put forward Cody. It would be interesting to have an encounter where your only objective is delaying an enemy who is just trying to get past you. Tripping, pushing, certain 'control' spells would all become very useful in a situation like that. It would be nice to see more situations in which skills/talents/spells which disable/impair enemies are allowed to shine.

At the BI I took a wound in Encounter 1 and a second wound in Encounter 2. It would have been two wounds in the second encounter but my GM (Matt Flinn, bless him ) said he didn't want me to die halfway through the BI. I was strangely (for those who know me) fatalistic in the Origins BI. I guess being a Beltinian and having all that undead goodness to beat up made me happy enough to lose the character if need be (go out in a blaze of glory as it were). To be honest I was almost hoping to get a physical flaw like losing an eye or some such. Makes my Exorcist more scary. I mean in our first fight in Dark Heresy I had my foot blown off, everybody else got really beat up and one guy ended up in a box...as in full body cyborg with just an organic brain. So yeah THAT game was lethal... I think now that I have had time to play under the new gritty rules I'm pretty happy with the way things are. I'd say don't tinker with it just yet. Just my two cents on the matter.

The last con game I played, our Ss'ressen was Vanquished by Wounds four times. (Ss'ressen Frenzy is not your friend when beyond the borders of Altheria.)

One Spell Rune: Stabilise and 3 (transferred) fate points later we managed to keep him not-dead.

A bad situation is all it takes for final death to occur.

I should be in bed, but this thread is important enough to deserve a reply.

I agree with the majority of the posters here that I do not want to see more character deaths in the campaign. Because there is no way back from it in this system. Dead = new (probably significantly weaker) character. That's not true in all systems. At medium to high level D&D death sucks ...buts its really a status condition not much different than petrifaction. You usually don't stay dead unless you choose to. Eventually your friends drag your PCs body to a temple and you get a raise or a resurrection (depending on "how much" dead you PC is) and then you go back into action with a minor drop in power.

On the other hand I agree with Josh that I wish it was easier to make combat in Arcanis scary. I have definitely seen some scary fights in and out of BIs...but they are few and far between.

While there are many elements of Arcanis that I love (the clock, weapon tricks and MTs)...I find the rule set to be somewhat schizophrenic on what tone the mechanics want to support. No resource management in spells or stamina/hp leans towards swashbuckling (with no meaningful external restrictions on how much the PCs can do in a day.) Horror checks could lean away from that and potentially impose external restrictions on heroes...except that they most often work as a Fate tax. If I'm facing "the big bad" with Tukufu I'm probably just spending a fate point to pass the check and not roll. So I don't think Horror works very well in the campaign as it gets played. Wounds are also a little strange. In tier 1 they're a Big Deal. By Tier 3 they aren't.

Altogether this means that for something to be challenging it needs to push the PCs at "Full Power"...but anything that pushes the PCs at full power also risks TPKing the party. I think this is true for one of the fights in Desecration and again in Gleams of Fire (the two fights outside of BIs I think are really dangerous). I think its hard mechanically to write a scary fight in the Arcanis rules system that isn't in danger of being unfair to the players.

Outside of really rough fights where I had to dig deep into the reserve of my horde of "stuff" there are only two kinds of scary scenarios (that I thought were fair to me as a player) and I'd wish we could see more of them in modules.

The first is you basically are in danger of "running out of gas" on your way to the final fight. I call this the "Ravenloft" scenario. The first Battle of Semar was like that. Resources got chewed up. When I ran it for the Portland players years ago the table really did believe for about 20 minutes that they were watching the end game of their PCs in what would be a TPK...before the Trogs left the field of battle after the Ssethric officers all went down. The old origins delve into the Lavender Way where some PCs chose to fight a VO for the first time was also like this.

The second type of scary scenario is where you reach "game over" without ever getting to the fight. Maybe a clock is ticking down...or you're trying to sneak into somewhere where there is overwhelming force if you get caught. Either way you need to make good choices or you may fail before ever rolling initiative.

Collectively I believe the Arcanis rules do not support the "Ravenloft" scenario where the PCs are slowly ground down over an adventure. That's not a story the rule system supports.

That leaves the second type. Most good writers are aware of the second type. For those at Arcaniscon who pursued the Harlequin, they only had 48 Ticks to find and save the "important person" at the final encounter (despite all reasonable efforts on my part they got there at tick t38...next time I promise to try for another 9 ticks worth of dirty tricks). In a different mod, I was various shades of nervous for over two hours playing a special table where we sailed to Ymandragore to steal a McGuffin...because NO ONE is tough enough to fight off the Isle if it goes on red alert.

If we want a grittier feel to the campaign and/or a heightened sense of danger for PCs i think the best solution is for module writers to look for those opportunities to include these kinds of scenes for their modules.

I feel that my thoughts on the gritty death rule should have been part of my initial post. so please allow me to make an important distinction, I don't want characters to be removed from the campaign. I do want there to be something bad for characters that have somehow managed to find a death.

The person during the crusade that chose the final death stating, that there was nothing better that the player could imagine for his character's death, and coming back from this anything else would be anticlimatic (and sorry really rough paraphrasing there), If players never have the opportunity to choose, stories like this never get told.

I don't think that I'm the only person that has cognitive dissonance that when players fight an avatar of a ssethric death god, not a single one of them is killed by the avatar of death.

I was prepared to lose my character confronting the BBEG. Probably the first time for that. I guess it comes down to being the right fit for the fight...being a Beltinian and all that. What I hate is playing any mod where I have no dog in the fight...as in why am I here....which is why I try to find out at least where the mod is set, if not the theme, so I can play it with the "right character." That way I increase mine and everyone else's enjoyment at the table.

As for flaws and scars makes sense for me, phobias as well (Hummingbirds! Why did it have to be Hummingbirds!... )

Which brings up a bug-bear of mine (probably needs to go to Rules section).


Hummingbirds doesn't meet the available choices.

Well the Phobia Hummingbirds was voluntarily taken by characters for no other reason than it fit the situation of a particular BI. In that case, the players could take a phobia since it was not a flaw from death nor giving any particular mechanical benefit.

John

*raise thread from dead*

Straw poll about usages of Permanent Injury. Is it being used instead of 'death' (ie: failed Vigor/Resolve Action Roll when vanquished by Wounds) or as written (failed Heal roll... which is only used during long-term healing as per skill).

PC went down to wounds tonight and failed the Vigor roll.

The official rule is you can come back w/ the Permanent Injury. Hasn't happened to me (yet). Tukufu would probably come back. My crusade arc character Eisener, if reactivated, probably stays dead - as a Nierite a glorious death on a battlefield is not something to spurn.

So it depends. Think that has always been true.

Jaeger died twice in the original campaign. First time got unlucky facing a wilder who surged. I/he chose to accept the raise dead. Did think about it, he was a Paladin of Hurrian who died fighting evil...as good an ending for a Paladin as you can hope to get. Second time he gave his soul (voluntarily) to help save the soul of King Noen of Solonos Mor. That was obviously permanent. (Hmmm...As I think about it those were both James Zweirs mods...watch out in the special this year!)

Whether you come back or not is always a personal IC/OOC choice. My condolences to your friend's PC. Given the space of a day or two to think about it I bet they know the right answer irrespective of a straw poll of the player base.