Death Penalty for RPG

[PR0_DEVV]

How should I design a death penalty for an rpg? Mind you it isn’t meant to be a “hardcore” game, just an average challenge.

Deepwoken and similar games have the most extreme death penalty with perma-death, whereas other games lack any penalty for death other than putting you back at spawn.
I feel like some penalty is needed in order to make the world feel dangerous and to create tension when fighting against tough monsters, but it cant be too punishing because I want to encourage risk-taking and exploration.

Some ideas I had:

• equipment loses some durability
• loss of gold/currency on death
• level loss?
• when you die, you enter a “hollowed”, and need to visit a healer and pay a fee to exit that state. whilst hollowed, you have lower drop rates and xp gain

Thoughts on death penalties in rpgs?

• I like them
• I dislike them
• I hate them
• Other (comment)

Any thoughts?

[Crazedbrick1]

I think that heavily depends on the severity of the death penalty. I heavily dislike games that feature a perma-death mechanic and I prefer games that have you give a lighter punishment like losing currency or something.

I’m a bit biased, but I like Elden Ring’s death mechanic a lot. It has you lose your currency once you die and it gives you an opportunity to pick them back up, but if you die a second time without picking them up, you lose the currency forever.

[PR0_DEVV]

Yeah I’m also a big fan of how fromsoft handles it in elden ring and souls. I feel like this mechanic is dependent on how good your level design is though. If it’s too easy to retrieve your runes/souls, then it isn’t interesting, but a bit of a chore.

Thanks for the input!

[Crazedbrick1]

Yeah, there is a big flaw with that system though.

During early game, the system works well in most cases because the Runes/Souls are a lot more valued to level up, but during the endgame and when you have a reliable farming spot in the game, Rune/Soul retrieval becomes less important.

I often find myself not caring if I lose my Runes because I just spend a few minutes farming for them later.

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I think there are two major risks when dying in Fromsoftware games.

1. Losing exploration progress

2. Soul/Rune loss

Exploration is a cornerstone of all open world RPG games, especially in areas that won’t give you a rest area for a long time. During most stages of Elden Ring, I am scared of dying because of the enemies respawning and having to run back to my last location.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I like it when bosses don’t make it easy to retrieve runes in their boss arena. It keeps things interesting.

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I feel like Fromsoftware pulls off the concept of death. They don’t want the player to avoid dying. They actually encourage it. With how hard the game is, the players need to focus on getting better at the game, not avoiding death at all cost.

This is why I hate permanent death games. What’s the point of playing a game that’s already extremely difficult on top of paying a very heavy price for dying a few times.

I’m not against permanent death itself, but it should not be the only option given the players. It should be like Minecraft hardcore mode, where players are given an option.

I also dislike Minecraft’s system for death. Having all items drop upon death and have them at risk for respawning is incredibly harsh, especially when the player forgets to set their spawn with a bed.

Terraria’s, death system doesn’t have the player drop their items upon death, but their money instead. However, given the limited use of money in that game, I think the punishment is too light.

I just did a lot of yapping