Re: ARGH!!! How the hell do you kill a rules lawyer without going to prison for it?

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 23:28:00 +0000, Dirk Collins wrote:

> I think that there should always be some risk of dying for party members
> with just about any encounter. Not a Total Party Kill, however one party
> member or another should always have something to lose, and something to
> gain, aside from resources (gold, magic, treasure, etc).

How much risk?

You see, there's a problem with ever-present risk - it makes for dead PCs.
If there's a 1% risk per encounter that any one PC dies in a standard
encounter, and we ignore any increased risk in following encounters from
being a member short, the half-life of a PC is 69 encounters. Sounds like
a lot, right? It isn't - it's only five levels worth, and the chance of a
character getting to 20th level without dying is only 7.8%. It also means
that a PC should put aside ~80GP per encounter to pay for his Raise Dead.

Not only that, but once you look at a party of four, the chance of at
least one PC dying per encounter is 3.9%, and chances are at least one
person will die every level.

Unless Raise Dead spells, and better, are readily available this is not
going to result in good party continuity, or much player investment in the
campaign.

.

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