I'm a long time role player and experienced dungeon master playing with a group who has played together for a very long time. I'm starting a new campaign, and in short, all party members (and not just them) are immortal, lich like, regrowing new bodies if and when they should die. I'll get into the hows and whys and all of that fun stuff in just a bit. First, I also want to mention that they are all working for the Church of Kelemnvor, and one of the party members is half-Kurja (a custom race). That should be enough for any of my players who may be seeing this to confirm it is my campaign. So at this point I'll throw out the mandatory disclaimer / request: if you are one of my players, GET OUT NOW! You will only spoil things for yourself, and if I find out you've read any of this (and you know I will), let's just say it won't go well.
Ok, so now that we hopefully have the room to ourselves, let's dive into it :-)
The reason all of my players are immortal is a metagame one. We've played many campaigns together over many rule systems with many dungeon masters / game masters / storytellers / whatever. Over the last Several campaigns, us all being friends and getting very invested in our characters, the game masters have become scared to kill off players. This has been true even in the campaigns where the game masters swore it was not. They just won't kill anyone, even when they're begging for it. Well that's not literally true, I guess I should say, not unless they have the player's permission to kill their character. Kind, but not in the best interest of the game. After all, this in turn has led to multiple disadvantageous thing- players get distracted and are only halfhearted in their efforts in combat (after all, they can't die), rarely to never plan ahead or scout for traps when in dangerous situations (why bother?) and in social engagements often have a very unearned swagger to them, a "do you know who you're talking to" sort of attitude which shouldn't end well for them, but which they somehow get away with, time and time again.
For my campaign, I'm moving away from a carefully built story which is custom designed to be challenging but not deadly to the party, and back towards an old school, open world feel, with location based encounters and quest hooks that are a mix of the carefully level appropriate content (typically that which comes to them) and adventures that are just there, for anyone or anything to come across and do with as they see fit, whether NPCs that clear the dungeon in their stead or evildoers which can then take over a new lair or start evil machinations, which left unchecked can have lasting impact on the world at large.
I know that the movement away from the hubris laden unspoken assumptions of "well if it's in front of us we must be able to defeat it" and "even if we aren't supposed to beat it the DM won't just kill us" will not come without cost. The party is going to randomly encounter an adult or ancient red dragon on a random encounter chart at like level 6 and try to fight it, they'll accept that "ultra difficult" contract which is generally available in a city and dive in head first, or they'll just keep wandering through dungeons without a care in the world, and eventually they'll meet their end. Personally I'm no more fond of killing off players than most DMs anyway, and I certainly don't want to build a world which incorporates their backstory, get them heavily invested, and then end it with a smash as a rock flies in from a giant they had no business fighting in the first place, just because their skills at identifying what they should fight and when they should take flight are atrophied.
So, to be as clear as possible about the fact the kids gloves are coming off, and to lessen the sting of it, all the players are immortal. After a sort. They are part of the Xharim, a class of entity whose soul is bound in service to a diety, who experiences a limited form of immortality in exchange for service. Upon death, those entities souls do not pass on to their destination realm, but instead flit back to their Ujo, a device not dissimilar to a phalactyr, whereupon a new body is formed and their soul inhabits it, returning to life, on dawn of the 3rd day after their death. This makes a player's death undesirable, but hardly campaign ending, and even a TPK, though a major setback (after all, at that point they've lost all their stuff) not the end of it all. This also provides incentive for enemies who know who and what they are to attempt to capture them rather than kill them, since death means they can just come back to bother them again while capture (theoretically) gets them out of the way until the enemy's schemes are brought to fruition. It also makes in many cases capture a fate worse than death, and suicide becomes in some circumstances a solid tactical move. Finally, much like a lich, it means threats to their body are the lowest class of threat to them. Threats to their plans, reduction in access to areas, economic sanctions, and threats to others they care about would be a step above. The aforementioned threats to their freedom would be a significantly higher class of danger, and finally threats to their Ujo itself are threats of a truly permanent nature, and are not to be treated lightly.
Now, the players are far from the only entities who have these powers. Many of them have been formed by many dieties, good, neutral, and evil alike, over the years. In fact, society has had time to adjust to their existence, and there are legal distinctions between for example killing a 'mortal' and killing a Xharim. After all, killing a Xharim, assuming you turn over their possessions to the temple of their patron diety and don't steal them, is essentially merely inconveniencing them, and is a crime no greater than assault, which no one cares about. That is simply one taste of the complexity they have brought to the world, of course. I could go on and on about evil dieties creating Xharim, only to have their followers torture them to death, over and over and over, to explore the limits of the human body and mind. I could talk about armies using them as suicide bombers, leading to certain treaties being signed which are upheld in public but ignored when convenient and when such activities can be kept hidden. It's a big world, and the existence of these creatures has widespread ramifications. However, this is already a MASSIVE wall of text, and if anyone is still with it, bless you and thank you. We're nearly done.
The question I have, then, is not one of "should I", the decision is made, this is the campaign they're in, and if you think they're getting off too easy after death with a loss of stuff (unless it can be recovered from the corpse), a loss of 3 days time, and forced travel to wherever the Ujo is stored, I understand, and rest assured, there's more here than meets the eye (isn't there always?) and immortality does not come without a cost. It's a matter of "what's next"? In a world where immortality exists, albeit at tremendous financial cost to temples, and with limitations I'll not spell out here, what would you do with that? How would you react? As a follower of an evil diety, how would that affect your planning, both in scope and execution, and your vectors of attack? What tactics and tricks of the players do you think I should watch out for, which would not exist in a normal game? Given those tactics could exist and likely have been performed by others, how do you think it would affect the defenses, organizational structure, and planning of monsters who have had to deal with that kind of tactic for years now?
In short, help me see ahead, and see viewpoints other than my own. Help me plan for the game breaking flaws this system will create and patch them up. And sure, if you want to give feedback about whether you think this is a good idea or not, go for it, and feedback about whether you think such a world would be interesting to play in would definitely be welcome. I'm not changing it, but I'm certainly willing to listen. I'd love to hear what pitfalls you've experienced with something like this, or what alternate solutions to the problems I detailed at the start you have employed, and especially I'd be interested to hear how successful you were or were not with whatever you decided to implement. Thank you all so much for your time, for your consideration, and for your input.
I think I'd make some NPC tied to the PC's backstory, (maybe their brother, or family, or friend, or whatever) and either make the BBEG kill them, or try to kill them (depending on if the PCs are vengeful kind of people, or more protective and stereotypically heroic). This way, the stake is on a mortal character, but not in the PC. In case of the second option, I'd also not hesitate to kill the NPC if the players fail in some way. Maybe I'd even have a deity bring the NPC back to life but then say to the PCs "My power can only bring a person back once" or something like that, so that they have a warning and know the true stakes of the situation.
Also, some tips to make the players truly value this NPC, so that the PCs actually want to protect them/avenge them:
1. Make them likeable. Make them care for the PCs, or for other people, make them funny, make them have a quirk or something. Whatever makes the PCs like them.
2. Make them competent. This one is kind of tricky. If you make them too powerful, the PCs will feel like they have no impact and the story is single-handedly being dragged along by this NPC. If you make them weak, they just become your typical video game escort mission… escort… and nobody likes those. Even if you make their skills on par with the PCs', they'll then just be another PC controlled by you. I advise you to instead make them very incompetent in the skill the PCs are doing the most, and making them extremely competent in the one that they're doing the least. So, if this is a combat heavy campaign, make them suck at fighting, but make them have a contact with great politicians, or maybe they have a lot of merchant friends. And if it's a roleplay heavy campaign, then do the opposite.
I hope this helped you on your DMing endeavours. I am always happy to help :D
Flesh to stone becomes much more popular. Medusae, "gorgons," basilisks, and so forth become even more terrifying to fight than they already are. This means that greater restoration becomes more popular, as it can undo petrification. That, in turn, means that diamonds become more valuable, as does diamond dust.
I want to hear (read) more about your world.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
I had considered immortality for one of my campaigns, and I ran across an idea somewhere that tickled my fancy:
Players are going to be even more brazen and less tied to can we win, it becomes a form of attrition. I don't mind it so much, if you want to smash like waves into a rock, be my guest, however....
You touched on the Ujo being threatened, that is/should be a constant real threat once they reach level 5 imo. I would also make death laborious and common at first. Have them die, every few battles. Give them the satisfaction of coming back after doing something haphazard. Don't tone down anything, if it's deadly, it's deadly. If that trap is meant to squash a player into a sticky red paste, do it. The more grit you tag into it the more that immortality is going to lose the new car smell and the players will actually, truly beg for death.
Hey all!
I'm a long time role player and experienced dungeon master playing with a group who has played together for a very long time. I'm starting a new campaign, and in short, all party members (and not just them) are immortal, lich like, regrowing new bodies if and when they should die. I'll get into the hows and whys and all of that fun stuff in just a bit. First, I also want to mention that they are all working for the Church of Kelemnvor, and one of the party members is half-Kurja (a custom race). That should be enough for any of my players who may be seeing this to confirm it is my campaign. So at this point I'll throw out the mandatory disclaimer / request: if you are one of my players, GET OUT NOW! You will only spoil things for yourself, and if I find out you've read any of this (and you know I will), let's just say it won't go well.
Ok, so now that we hopefully have the room to ourselves, let's dive into it :-)
The reason all of my players are immortal is a metagame one. We've played many campaigns together over many rule systems with many dungeon masters / game masters / storytellers / whatever. Over the last Several campaigns, us all being friends and getting very invested in our characters, the game masters have become scared to kill off players. This has been true even in the campaigns where the game masters swore it was not. They just won't kill anyone, even when they're begging for it. Well that's not literally true, I guess I should say, not unless they have the player's permission to kill their character. Kind, but not in the best interest of the game. After all, this in turn has led to multiple disadvantageous thing- players get distracted and are only halfhearted in their efforts in combat (after all, they can't die), rarely to never plan ahead or scout for traps when in dangerous situations (why bother?) and in social engagements often have a very unearned swagger to them, a "do you know who you're talking to" sort of attitude which shouldn't end well for them, but which they somehow get away with, time and time again.
For my campaign, I'm moving away from a carefully built story which is custom designed to be challenging but not deadly to the party, and back towards an old school, open world feel, with location based encounters and quest hooks that are a mix of the carefully level appropriate content (typically that which comes to them) and adventures that are just there, for anyone or anything to come across and do with as they see fit, whether NPCs that clear the dungeon in their stead or evildoers which can then take over a new lair or start evil machinations, which left unchecked can have lasting impact on the world at large.
I know that the movement away from the hubris laden unspoken assumptions of "well if it's in front of us we must be able to defeat it" and "even if we aren't supposed to beat it the DM won't just kill us" will not come without cost. The party is going to randomly encounter an adult or ancient red dragon on a random encounter chart at like level 6 and try to fight it, they'll accept that "ultra difficult" contract which is generally available in a city and dive in head first, or they'll just keep wandering through dungeons without a care in the world, and eventually they'll meet their end. Personally I'm no more fond of killing off players than most DMs anyway, and I certainly don't want to build a world which incorporates their backstory, get them heavily invested, and then end it with a smash as a rock flies in from a giant they had no business fighting in the first place, just because their skills at identifying what they should fight and when they should take flight are atrophied.
So, to be as clear as possible about the fact the kids gloves are coming off, and to lessen the sting of it, all the players are immortal. After a sort. They are part of the Xharim, a class of entity whose soul is bound in service to a diety, who experiences a limited form of immortality in exchange for service. Upon death, those entities souls do not pass on to their destination realm, but instead flit back to their Ujo, a device not dissimilar to a phalactyr, whereupon a new body is formed and their soul inhabits it, returning to life, on dawn of the 3rd day after their death. This makes a player's death undesirable, but hardly campaign ending, and even a TPK, though a major setback (after all, at that point they've lost all their stuff) not the end of it all. This also provides incentive for enemies who know who and what they are to attempt to capture them rather than kill them, since death means they can just come back to bother them again while capture (theoretically) gets them out of the way until the enemy's schemes are brought to fruition. It also makes in many cases capture a fate worse than death, and suicide becomes in some circumstances a solid tactical move. Finally, much like a lich, it means threats to their body are the lowest class of threat to them. Threats to their plans, reduction in access to areas, economic sanctions, and threats to others they care about would be a step above. The aforementioned threats to their freedom would be a significantly higher class of danger, and finally threats to their Ujo itself are threats of a truly permanent nature, and are not to be treated lightly.
Now, the players are far from the only entities who have these powers. Many of them have been formed by many dieties, good, neutral, and evil alike, over the years. In fact, society has had time to adjust to their existence, and there are legal distinctions between for example killing a 'mortal' and killing a Xharim. After all, killing a Xharim, assuming you turn over their possessions to the temple of their patron diety and don't steal them, is essentially merely inconveniencing them, and is a crime no greater than assault, which no one cares about. That is simply one taste of the complexity they have brought to the world, of course. I could go on and on about evil dieties creating Xharim, only to have their followers torture them to death, over and over and over, to explore the limits of the human body and mind. I could talk about armies using them as suicide bombers, leading to certain treaties being signed which are upheld in public but ignored when convenient and when such activities can be kept hidden. It's a big world, and the existence of these creatures has widespread ramifications. However, this is already a MASSIVE wall of text, and if anyone is still with it, bless you and thank you. We're nearly done.
The question I have, then, is not one of "should I", the decision is made, this is the campaign they're in, and if you think they're getting off too easy after death with a loss of stuff (unless it can be recovered from the corpse), a loss of 3 days time, and forced travel to wherever the Ujo is stored, I understand, and rest assured, there's more here than meets the eye (isn't there always?) and immortality does not come without a cost. It's a matter of "what's next"? In a world where immortality exists, albeit at tremendous financial cost to temples, and with limitations I'll not spell out here, what would you do with that? How would you react? As a follower of an evil diety, how would that affect your planning, both in scope and execution, and your vectors of attack? What tactics and tricks of the players do you think I should watch out for, which would not exist in a normal game? Given those tactics could exist and likely have been performed by others, how do you think it would affect the defenses, organizational structure, and planning of monsters who have had to deal with that kind of tactic for years now?
In short, help me see ahead, and see viewpoints other than my own. Help me plan for the game breaking flaws this system will create and patch them up. And sure, if you want to give feedback about whether you think this is a good idea or not, go for it, and feedback about whether you think such a world would be interesting to play in would definitely be welcome. I'm not changing it, but I'm certainly willing to listen. I'd love to hear what pitfalls you've experienced with something like this, or what alternate solutions to the problems I detailed at the start you have employed, and especially I'd be interested to hear how successful you were or were not with whatever you decided to implement. Thank you all so much for your time, for your consideration, and for your input.
I think I'd make some NPC tied to the PC's backstory, (maybe their brother, or family, or friend, or whatever) and either make the BBEG kill them, or try to kill them (depending on if the PCs are vengeful kind of people, or more protective and stereotypically heroic). This way, the stake is on a mortal character, but not in the PC. In case of the second option, I'd also not hesitate to kill the NPC if the players fail in some way. Maybe I'd even have a deity bring the NPC back to life but then say to the PCs "My power can only bring a person back once" or something like that, so that they have a warning and know the true stakes of the situation.
Also, some tips to make the players truly value this NPC, so that the PCs actually want to protect them/avenge them:
1. Make them likeable. Make them care for the PCs, or for other people, make them funny, make them have a quirk or something. Whatever makes the PCs like them.
2. Make them competent. This one is kind of tricky. If you make them too powerful, the PCs will feel like they have no impact and the story is single-handedly being dragged along by this NPC. If you make them weak, they just become your typical video game escort mission… escort… and nobody likes those. Even if you make their skills on par with the PCs', they'll then just be another PC controlled by you. I advise you to instead make them very incompetent in the skill the PCs are doing the most, and making them extremely competent in the one that they're doing the least. So, if this is a combat heavy campaign, make them suck at fighting, but make them have a contact with great politicians, or maybe they have a lot of merchant friends. And if it's a roleplay heavy campaign, then do the opposite.
I hope this helped you on your DMing endeavours. I am always happy to help :D
Flesh to stone becomes much more popular. Medusae, "gorgons," basilisks, and so forth become even more terrifying to fight than they already are. This means that greater restoration becomes more popular, as it can undo petrification. That, in turn, means that diamonds become more valuable, as does diamond dust.
I want to hear (read) more about your world.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
I had considered immortality for one of my campaigns, and I ran across an idea somewhere that tickled my fancy:
Players are going to be even more brazen and less tied to can we win, it becomes a form of attrition. I don't mind it so much, if you want to smash like waves into a rock, be my guest, however....
You touched on the Ujo being threatened, that is/should be a constant real threat once they reach level 5 imo. I would also make death laborious and common at first. Have them die, every few battles. Give them the satisfaction of coming back after doing something haphazard. Don't tone down anything, if it's deadly, it's deadly. If that trap is meant to squash a player into a sticky red paste, do it. The more grit you tag into it the more that immortality is going to lose the new car smell and the players will actually, truly beg for death.
At least that is what I was going to aim for.