Much as the title suggests (and my own personal campaign to bring about the idea closure is not negative) I challenge each of you to think, honestly, and to share both the IC and OOC reasons you allow your PCs to continue coming back even after a well played opportunity to end a story has presented itself. I am not referring to some fluke death in a dungeon, but a well RP'd out finale that turned out to not be so final. Or, if you can, I post an even larger challenge of giving a somewhat (without spoilers) detailed account of one time you had perhaps wished you allowed a PC to remain dead, for the sake of story. Perhaps, and I hope, if we are honest with ourselves, a solution can be found.

I only wish people to look at these and question themselves as to whether any of these IC reasons are more persuasive than the corresponding OOC reason.

I'll start with the second challenge:

After a fluke, while trying to aid another accused of necromancy, my Palemaster was discovered by the Eternal Order, after a well RP'd out confrontation resulting in my PC's death, they removed the arm and disposed of her and she was given a proper burial. In hindsight, I do wish I had closured the character just then, but in a selfish decision I only waited just a day to play the PC once more. Had I not have, not only would my own story have came to an appropriate ending, but all the RP that the other players involved with the scene had put into making it enjoyable, would have been far more rewarding.

I see you have been inspired to really go after this issue.

I wish I could answer either one of those. I have never had a "good end to a story" circumstance on Amia, nor does my character ever really get involved in anything that would warrant me to ever think about it much. I only PvP'd maybe once or twice in...I dunno, six or seven years or so?

Just remember: Think of whether or not killing off your character after a certain circumstance will lead to any flourishing roleplay. If you hit level 20 or so, have a moderate amount of RP and some impact to the server, don't let some powerbuilt level 15 come along, gank you and proceed to kill you off without much consequence for their RP, your RP and people it will effect.

But on the flip side, don't piss off a conflicting faction and make them want you dead, only to finally kill you and for you to be resurrected the next day.

Kinda down to common sense and believability. With raise dead scrolls so readily available, what do we even kill nowadays?

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I'll explain the Assassination of Haan, as my own experience with something like this.

There was a really big climax with my character, where he was assassinated in such a really cool way. I felt such a sense of closure, and such a sense of awe over the entire spectacle. As it was happening, I sat back in my chair and was like-- Yeah, this is totally perma. He was so deeply betrayed, so thoroughly disposed of. Everything he had built, crumbled. He was left with so many questions, so few answers-- Hardly the ability to even get the answers. It was a quick blur of bloodshed, and his pride overcame him in a very fatal way.

My decision to permakill him was because 1.) The ending provided was a very neat ending to the character. Story wise, his death at this point satisfied my sense of climax and closure with the character. And 2.) Because all the assassins really went the distance to see it done. They'd exposed him for what he was, betrayed him so severely. Jumping back up after that all happens really destroys their efforts. They put a huge IC risk in betraying Haan. For example, if they failed, he would know that he was betrayed and tell everyone he knew. This has always been a huge fear of mine as a more secretive evil. If I expose myself in dispatching an enemy, what's to say he won't just pop up with a respawn button and tell everyone how I was actually an evil person, you know? And then, if that were to happen, my years of careful IC work are all for naught. Sure, the retort is that I could have been more careful and not tried to kill the guy. But sometimes, a murder's just got to happen. And I could easily take measures to ensure that death is permanent, ICly. Like putting them in a bag of holding, destroying it, and sending them to limbo. But OOCly, as a player, I can't force a permadeath situation on another character. No matter how thorough I've made it ICly, the other player can just elect to come back and reveal the fact that I killed him. I think, to be perfectly frank, this is one of the reasons why secretive evils are commonly criticized for not doing anything.

However! For those that remember, he wasn't permakilled at this point! Why Hackums, why?

If it was up to me, I would have permakilled him at this point. And its weird saying it like that. While I absolutely wanted to empower the assassin's work, I also had to recognize the work of folks who wanted to see Haan alive. It wasn't that they just waved a hand and said, "//Okay, 24 hours is up, you're now resurrected, yaaay." And if they had just elected to cast a True Resurrection, I probably would have denied it. However, there were certain people that stuck their own heads out-- by dangerously betraying the very assassins that kill Haan. They took risks to capture a piece of Haan's body at his time of death and bring him to a PC cleric to return him to life. They needed him alive to complete a certain.. something.

So I was at a major impasse. I very, very strongly wanted to have my character be permakilled, to give credit to the great work of the assassins. But I also couldn't, in good faith, ignore the efforts of other players who worked very hard, and took IC great risks to bring him back to life. So I took a step back, and allowed what happened to happen.

In the end, Haan was raised. But.. I felt really weird about it. I hated the fact that he was alive, when I had such a fantastic opportunity for his story to be done. So in the end, I made him quite a recluse, and he ended up fleeing the island to escape future death. He didn't know who he could trust. His criminal empire crumbled, and I had a very difficult time reasoning why he would stay on Amia at all, given that he was so severely betrayed, and so absolutely afraid of what his assassins were still doing.

So his story is over. And I give that in large credit to the assassins. I tried to at least satisfy some of the wishes of the people that brought him back. More than most, I think, I empathize with the people who pop back at the aid of a cleric. And I also so deeply empathize with the people who are afraid to expose themselves because they're worried that all their plans will be exposed by their victim's post-death confessions.


I wouldn't at all let one of my characters die permanently to what I see as senseless PvP. But there are some cases where I would let my character die. There are a couple things you can do as the killer, as well! I really, strongly recommend making your opponent's death really meaningful. If you assassinate them, or execute them after a large trial-- make it something impressive. Make it such a stellar scene, that the victim player would consider letting it be the end to their character.

I tried really hard with Di'rien in the recent Shrine executions to make it a big event. There were two people killed, and while even in the same event, two very different cases of story closure-- in my opinion. If I were in Aly'dra's shoes, I might have considered permadeath myself. If I were in Vinn'do's, I probably would not have. That all being said, of course, I don't condemn either of them for deciding not to permakill their characters. Don't get me wrong! What I felt was a really neat end for Aly'dra, she felt was a really neat changing phase, a really neat end of a chapter-- and a beginning of something new. So I can appreciate and understand that. Bottom line, if you play with respect for other people's stories, you're gonna run into less of these issues than if you play to win.



... I'm very much expecting Di'rien's permadeath soon! Haha!

Several good points that Hackums brought up. Including:



I bring this out specifically, as it is the major reasoning behind why I have started this thread. For those that say 'Evil does not need to kill to be effective' Such is true, but the risk of discovery I feel stays many hands, on an OOC level.

At any rate, very good input thus far, keep it coming!

>_>

<_<

Nothing to see here. Move along.

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Winner of Amia's "Most Ethical Time Traveler" award 2026

Character Portraits!

Hey, this thread -was- titled Self Awareness of Death. I thought it fitting, yeah?

This comes up too often for it to be accepted. Honestly it's just dumb. Let me propose an alternative:

When you 'die,' i.e., you are reduced to -11 hp, you are critically injured and unable to fight any more. Broken limbs, blood loss, concussion, whatever - you're down for the count. Raise dead scrolls are really some tweaked restoration scroll, which repair the critical damage. If you respawn, you don't go to the fugue plane, you wake up at the Salandran temple. Your xp loss represents memory loss from the traumatic event, gold loss is the finders fee the good Samaritans who dragged you all the way to the temple pay.

This now keeps death a purely IC thing, and I think it puts more pressure on players to do as Hack was talking about, and respect the RP of the other side. I'm one of the players Hack mentioned that are leveling up secondary characters (not alts, but back ups) so that I can OOCly allow for my primary character's permadeath without writing myself out of the story. I really think everyone reading this needs to go back and read Hack's story of Haan again, because there are two exemplary role play lessons there. First, knowing when the end the story. Second, respecting the role play of others, or as they say in improv, don't negate the premise. I fully intend to follow both those principles as I RP on this server.

And look, the truth is, stories need endings. The best stories are the ones with a proper character arc, that follow the Hero's Journey, that mirror the cycle of life in that everything has to end. Things that go on and on, be they soap operas or endlessly retconned comics, become bland, all color reduced to gray because nothing ever changes. Whether it's retiring from adventuring or dying, characters - like artists - need to know when to bow out gracefully.

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You dare mock the Tibbly one, catcherer of drowses?

I dont think there should be pressure on people to act one way or the other. Pressure is really really bad, it kills fun and creates tensions between players if expectations aren't met.

Its the players decision to decide when the story ends after all (Or a DM's in certain cases.) but its defenitely good to evaluate when killed.

I certainly do agree perma killing a toon is a couragious decision though and a time will come for the curtain to fall for all toons.
I am not sure about levelling new toons before the old one dies, probably because in (3) months of play time my toons are level 23 and 17, I am a very slow and akward leveller and dont enjoy levelling alone.

Lastly I think players also have to think on what consequences actions bring. Yes, you could kill the hated enemy but you can also get killed yourself and being killed hurts.
Therefore killing should never be done casually and without a good reason imho on a rp server or it will have no impact.

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Characters played:

Harold Kendry (Illusionist) -> see avatar
Elloanore (Travelling bard)

I once had a perfect, epic, baller ending for my Banite monk, and I decided to perma him, but after some time nostalgia caught up with me and I brought him back. Worst. decision. ever. If you have a great ending, just do it and never look back.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Login: Narkudauman

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ╬ Join the Magisterium Mortis ╬

Howdy all!

One instance always stands out in my mind for me. Near a decade ago, different place, different server... I led a guild and as usual surrounded myself with great people and RPers. Skipping many many details my character was key to a plot to bring someone, something, BIG down. The crux was it was pretty much a suicide mission for my PC. The implications of not doing so were HUGE to the place and people he loved. He was all in, as was I. I decided if he did die, he'd be dead dead, no coming back from the deed and mindset he had to place himself in.

He did die, in a glorious and emotional manner. A dwarf is a dwarf of course of course and his heart filled with pride and honor they had succeeded and he was all to happy to give his life in that moment. He couldn't wait to see the great halls of Moradin, his kin, and friends that awaited him. Was about as perfect as a perma could be, the players, my guildmembers, and the DMs were spectacular.

A couple months later one of the DMs that helped the DM of the previously mentioned storyarc approached me about a long shot of him being able to be brought back... I balked at first and said no he's dead, but after hearing what he had in mind I wanted to see my guildmates in action without me actively being "da guildmasta". I had nothing to do with any of their needed tasks and figuring the whole thing out. The storyline and details assured me my PC would answer such a call IC, OOC it was going to take awhile and possessed enormous opportunity for failure. The resulting storyarc, numerous quests, and some superb RP took months to accomplish but accomplish them they did.

The ritual performed went poorly despite all my guildmates dutiful and honorable intentions. My PC was brought back, again without many many details, his mind was torn apart in the process. It took 3 months of constant RP night after night locked in a room for his own safety... and everyone elses', countless items of smashed furniture, a trio of killed guards, a friend or two attacked an near dead to eventually get healed enough to be labeled recovered and no longer a threat to folks. Again, my peeps and the DMs were awesome and resulting quirks and issues from the ordeal were great to playout as he survived and lived on, cause that wasn't the end of the story.. nooooo no.

All in all about a years worth of RP and plots there between the storyarc behind the big battle plan, my PC being perma-dead, the preparations and ritual, then healing. When you talk about "the good ole days", that was it. After all that for their friend, I was glad to bring him back, and we had a great number more adventures and near death experiences after that. The experience affected all of us and brought our core PCs together even tighter, great bunch of folks. Just like the Barak Runedar players here on Amia!

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fairdady..

Ive reached the conclusion with many of my chars, that salandra(the god i blame for the instant respawns 8P) isnt a good god, but a evil one, slowly desolving the respect for life, and through that the ability to fight for your life, weakening our resistance to evil.

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-Ja'acira Arrows'R'Us
-Balorin Wolfhammer- A dwarf so old he remember when the Beer stein was invented
Saisha Jai'diem Knight of bahamut, and abit of a looker

I want to share my experiences of playing an assassin-type PC in a world where death is cheap and return is frequent.

Over about 3-4 years on the server I've conducted (and occasionally participated in) maybe around ten PvP assassinations (including important NPCs), with about 5-6 of those being kill jobs (the rest abductions or beat-downs), and a near-100% success rate if I recall correctly (this % drops a little if I count jobs I planned but couldn't fully mount, which probably makes up the majority of failures). I have a good head for planning and an instinct for opportunism - I'm not trying to boast that I'm awesome or anything, but I get really into this kind of stuff and I try my hardest, so I feel I've done well. Of the kill jobs, the only perma-deaths are of NPCs - but in at least one of the plots in question, the NPCs had PC-level access to resurrection - in fact, in that particular case it genuinely came as a surprise that they stayed dead. However, every single kill job made waves and had lasting consequences for the victim (even if they paled in comparison to the backlash against my PC).
-One was traumatised for a considerable length of time, though I only saw the results when they later interacted with my PC.
-One was very nearly perma'd, but intrigue kept them around - although they were still heavily hobbled in the process, and it changed the face of the shadow war.
-The death of another stuck for long enough to have political ramifications, even though it was only intended as a symbolic act.
-One was sort of an accident and I'm not actually sure how the PC received it, but I suspect there might have been some kind of "memory loss" situation going on, which mitigated some consequences for my PC (except the psychological ones).

This is why I'm of the opinion that at least a good portion of the playerbase does think about the importance of a good kill, and how to handle bad things happening to their PC - even if it's a very select portion. If you take anything away from this, understand that there's potential among the playerbase.

So here's my advice to anyone who wants to do something similar - you sort of have to go in without any assurances of the result, both IC and OOC. Your character knows about all the Raise Dead scrolls and clerics around, so they should act accordingly And you as a player really have to give it your all - the RPers I prefer to interact with, generally, will accept a permadeath, but only if it's meaningful story-wise and mechanically sound. Therein lies a bit of a difficulty as the two tend to clash - to be 100% efficient, you may have to be really boring in execution (pun not intended). That is, pop out of nowhere when they're alone in the wilderness, gut them, dispose of their body, make sure no one can or will come looking for them or attempt a true res without knowledge of their final fate. That can be kind of boring for a lot of players. A compelling kill might come in front of hundreds of witnesses, involve stepping out of hiding for a brief exchange of action/thriller movie one-liners, and then a vicious duel in the streets. But there, you have many chances of failure, which tends to increase risk/difficulty exponentially. So pick your approach carefully - yes, there's an OOC motivation, but there always is when it comes to creating a compelling story - not everyone can appreciate the natural, logical progression. This is a game, and fantasy genre. Me personally I like going through the action/thriller tropes, and I feel that if my character's explanation of the incident wouldn't look out of place in a character development/background exposition scene in such a movie, I've done well.

So what do you do if you know your target won't accept the death? I like to go for what I call the "symbolic kill" - the simple act of striking them with intent to kill and succeeding - or at least escaping alive - can have great impact on the situation. Ideally these are done in public places with plenty of witnesses, because it doesn't really matter if they get resurrected/raised quickly (although if the bystanders are likely to interfere, you've got a tougher job). A tyrant who is successfully assassinated can lose the respect of his followers, and no matter how he reacts it's going to weaken him - if he does nothing, he looks weak. If he acts against the assassin he becomes distracted from his work - and worse if he fails to exact vengeance, he looks weaker. Meanwhile the assassin takes a lot of heat and may have trouble for a while, but his reputation grows - you see from this that no matter what happens to your target after the "You are dead" screen pops up, you've generated meaningful roleplay for yourself, them, and anyone you're connected to. Don't underestimated the value of a symbolic kill.

Admittedly it won't always turn out like that, and you have to succeed first - but if you drop IC standards down so that simply besting them in PvP from ambush is enough, and successfully escape (or not, if that's your thing), it's generally pretty easy to beat most PCs no matter how well-built.

What I said about "no expectations" applies even when your expectations are that low, mind - you never know if your target's player will have a change of heart and decide it was a really cool kill (or be one of those players who wants a meaningful death), and stay down. Or if no one bothers to go to the lengths of resurrecting them, and the player is the sort who can at least grow to accept the mechanical ramifications.

It sort of goes without saying, but make sure you have a reason. Even if that reason is that your PC was paid well for the job - someone has gone through the RP of building such a grudge against another PC that they are willing to hire an assassin. That's a good reason right there, even if it isn't exactly "your" good reason. Picking someone at random and murderising them just for its own sake does worse to cheapen death on the server than any number of players hitting respawn and shrugging off brutal murder. Not to say all random kills are bad - there's a recent situation IG that some are aware of, which demonstrates that they can work at least in theory if not practice.

Finally, know your P&P rules - a dead body isn't as easy to find with magic as a lot of people think. Scrying doesn't work because Scrying only targets living (or at least animate) creatures. Discern Location only works if the subject was touched by the caster in life. Raise dead does not work on a badly mutilated corpse (IMO fireball is insufficient, but Incendiary cloud or Tunnel Cleaner does the trick), a body which has been turned undead and subsequently re-slain, or *technically* someone killed by a death effect (according to the SRD, but no one pays attention to this). Resurrection with a body part ONLY works if the body part was taken from the body AT time of death - punch any PC who brags about keeping toenail clippings and lost hairs as a contingency. Locate Object has a limited range and won't work if the caster can't accurately envision the appearance of the body at time of death (thus a severely mutilated corpse can't be located. All is not lost of course, but I'm not gonna tell you what does work - you dirty magic-users have to figure it out for yourself.

Oh, and a lot of times assassination tends to end up like this:

Expectation...

... Reality

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@Thanatopsis#6293

Some stuff I forgot to mention but don't want to edit in for fear it will get lost - ironically it is often for fear of consequence that many assassin PCs hesitate on a job. It's very difficult to truly hide your PC's identity without simply not doing anything worthwhile, and if someone metagames there's often no recourse to recovering the damage, no matter how many DMs you speak to. It's the nature of the beast. I understand that for a lot of people, risking city bans, retaliation and permadeath for the sake of what might only amount to mildly inconveniencing someone just isn't worth the hassle. Generating RP is great and all, but getting banned from cities really sucks because of the way the server is set up (and this is by necessity, not something easily fixed). Some PCs can just do it and damn the consequences or enjoy riding them even more than they enjoy putting someone in the ground forever - and with each consequence you suffer, it becomes harder to hurt you. There's a phrase called "refuge in audacity" - you use your situation, your terrifying and dangerous actions, to act more freely. The man with nothing left to lose, that sort of thing. My PC is banned from all major active cities, but that hasn't really stopped him (or prevented me from finding RP) - he subsequently committed further acts against those cities, and what could they do really? It's not like they can double ban him (although it means turning back and fixing him becomes a bit harder...), and while they can retaliate, they have to actually succeed in doing so.

But if that's not in your PC's concept, yes, you are going to have to be a lot more selective about your actions.

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@Thanatopsis#6293

Exactly the point. You don't get a hit on your PC unless they did someone to piss off their contractor. This is where consequence comes in to play. You can't expect your character to do something that will cause someone to get annoyed at you so they hire a hit, try and kill you off going through all of the effort to set up your death only for you to just get lol res'd and expect them to not only allow that to happen, but for them to potentially be metagamed as the killer.

Once the metagame happens and they are outed without really being outed in any way IC, you can't reverse that either IC or OOC and it's the main danger of playing an Assassin or a Contractor.

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I cannot help but feel we are drifting away from what I intended this topic to be for...

Well I'm interested in seeing how my above comment links back to

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If we're talking about meaningful death, meaningful kills are relevant. A lot of players probably haven't even experienced the situation as described. I know I haven't. Most of my PvP deaths go like: "There was some messy fighting, they lost, but someone went ahead and raised them anyway"

So I felt it worthwhile to discuss the nature of making a meaningful kill, along with how the actions have been received in my experience. The general theme is still "consequences of death" and if your endgame is to compel other players to be more accepting of these consequences, it's worth considering the situations which bring them about.

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@Thanatopsis#6293

I will concede in hopes that you'll come across better than me, however, no, the original idea of the topic was to show that the majority of people who click respawn after being murdered do so for overwhelmingly OOC reasons rather than IC ones.

That said, I suppose lets see where this goes.

Sometimes the PCs do legitimately have the resources to come back from a death like that. However if I, as a player, am not in a situation where I would be scryed and true resurrected and I get killed in PvP? I'm gonna stay dead for the forseeable future. Granted, I'm not talking about PvP while I'm leveling or something. But if someone decides to take me out and someone else doesn't do something serious about it? Well I'm staying down.

If I'm in the woods and I get attacked by Velden, for example, and there isn't an explicit concerted attempt to track me down when I go missing for a few days I'm staying dead.

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Gerald Edmund
Discord: Metal Viking Guy #5433

DC taxation is theft!