What is the most lethal TTRPG?
>>97721425Well you can die during character creation in Traveller, so there's that. Early level B/X can be quite lethal. It's not unheard of for a single botched trap/spell/attack to outright kill your character.
>>97721434Traveller sounds like a good candidate, but you can get resurrected in B/X, and that feels like it takes away some that lethality.
Any game I play because I'm that fucking dumb.
>>97721425It depends on the GM/DM and the group. If you have a gleefully merciless person running the game and a group that'll happily make multiple characters they're ready to have slaughtered it doesn't matter how "soft" a system is, it'll be a blood bath. Conversely if you have a group that likes to get attached to their characters and a GM/DM willing to fudge things to keep the heroic party alive and kicking as the plot rolls along there is pretty much zero chance of death even in the most lethal systems.
I'm gonna go with Mage the Ascension 20th anniversary edition. the core book is like 800 pages, I bet you could beat someone to death with that easy.
Why is Shirou so retarded
>>97721425Paranoia expects characters to die enough that you have multiple clones to get through.
>>97721425The one whose bindings are radioactive, and whose pages are dusted with anthrax, whichever one that is.
>>97721457that just means you can die more than once, bonus lethality
>>97721620Not if i equip the Hero System corebook as protection:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Wmj46S5qo
You know I think someone could make a Lemmings-inspired TTRPG whose premise is being like, cartoonishly lethal.Make a freely editable character sheet. Every time the character dies (and dying is super easy) they cross out some stat or skill and get to put a new one, then say it's actually their character's twin brother coming through the door to avenge his slain sibling. You have a limited amount of lives but enough that you can try and spend your character's life to accomplish something without fear, or kill yourself to reroll your skillset
>>97721425Torchbearer is deliberately designed as a grim and gritty RPG where a single misstep can cost your life.
>>97721434This was going to be my answer, I second it. If you can fucking die during chargen, not only is the game the most lethal, it's also the most poorly designed piece of shit ever made.
>>97721700Survivors guilt + martyr complex.
>>97721434>you can die during character creation in TravellerWhich editions?
DnD 5e literally has a difficulty called "Deadly" and it is just brutal. Me and my friends have yet to get past level 1
>>97721425Recon and advanced reconYour hp is a 1d100, if you are under 30 you were to weak to be drafted reroll....1 round from an sks does 5d10 if I remember correctly, a burst from an AK is like guaranteed death if it hits even if you have 100hp.It suggests you make 5 characters on stand by for playing.
>>97721700The context to that line is that he himself is somehow alive after being killed (stabbed in the heart).
>>97722215Yeah, I'm gonna go with Paranoia, its the only game I can think of where player death is the intended outcome.
>>97721425Run Runequest with no magic.What you're left with is basically rocket-tag with battle-axes.My players learned this because they tried to play in my Runequest campaign without interacting with the magic system, even after my explanation that most people in Glorantha know some magic.They were casually trampled to death by two perfectly run of the mill Orlanthi bandits on horseback.
>>97721425Paranoia, me and my group had liquidated eachother multiple times even before we had left the complex
>>97721434>kill your characterThat doesn't make the TTRPG lethal, that just gives it a high character lethality.
>>97723024It's brilliant design.For one thing it makes chargen into a push-your-luck minigame which is fun in itself. Without death the only price of pushing your luck is a few stat decreases from ageing, which are basically nothing compared to the skills you can pick up.For another it conveys the intended tone to the players: your characters are doing dangerous shit and it can get them killed.Plus it gives players a way to reroll a statline they don't like: keep them in a dangerous career until it kills them. No begging the referee's permission or alternative generation rules, just an organic outcome players can exploit once they notice it.It's also hilarious and takes very little time. Calling it bad design is crazy.
>>97721434How and why
>>97721457Resurrection is honestly one of the gayest things ever introduced to RPGs. It just fucking ruins every game it's introduced in. Even worse with systems that don't include a massive gold piece cost for it. Even in D&D, players find cheesy ways around it, like pic related in Pathfinder, making resurrection cost like 200 gp for the restoration afterward. It's bad for the story if you're a narrativist, and it destroys the stakes of the game for the gamists. There has hardly ever been a good story that involved resurrection. Lord of the Rings? That was completely different and was basically metamorphosis. Every other time it has just ruined a campaign because they can just go around resurrecting people who died that they either want to talk to or don't like that they died. It destroys all tension.>b-b-b-b-but if your story's only stakes are death, it's a shit story, REAL good storytelling involves stakes beyond death>cue smug redditjak face.jpgShut up faggot. This is TTRPGs played by actual men, not your faggy romance coffee shop night market pubcrawl from Journeys to the Radiant Citadel. Death is the ultimate stake. "Oh well the bBEG will DESTROY TE WORLD" okay and the stakes are STILL DEATH. Some MacGuffin might get destroyed? Okay cool, that's a small number of TTRPG adventures. D&D involves fighting monsters, for which the losing condition is getting killed by them. Death is the source of tension. It's the source of all tension in human life. People wouldn't do anything all day if they were immortal, why bother? No urgency. Resurrection completely removes that and any game that has resurrection as an option without a ridiculously-high cost is complete shit and dissolves into tippyverse madness and designers need to be beaten into a fucking coma.
>>97721425>try to ask for medical help>die because you failed to speak your native language
>>97724326You know, as much as people here love to clown on Delicious Dungeon, I like how they handled resurrection and undeath mechanics and gave it well defined limitations.
>>97724357Runequest has that skill too.It's only assumed to be worth testing in contexts where your grasp of your own language might potentially fail you.For instance, detecting an obscure double-entendre or wordplay, or deciphering a regional or archaic dialect, or I suppose in a very particular use case; passing an exam in literature or the language itself.
>>97724289>HowAfter rolling stats you play a career minigame where each 4 year term earns them skills and (probably) starting cash or the like, but also has a chance to kill them.>whySee >>97724214
>>97724389I assume it's in all of Chaosium's earlier game versions. This one is from CoC 2e. Still rather humorous.
>>97724421Yes, in the broad strokes, but you could treat it as "Chance for subtext to go over your head".Like maybe the DM could roll on your language skill while you are reading a document, or listening in on a conversation, and if you pass that "passive" check, you get an extra hint on the subtext.That's how I'd swing it anyway.It might also be useful for inebriated or poisoned characters who's mental faculties are temporarily clouded.
>>97724388QRD?
>>97721425What is lethality like in your setting?
>>97722965>lemmings-inspired Paranoia. You get 6 clones of your character to sub in when you die. Everything is absurdist dystopian problem solving, very cartoony.
>>97724421Depends on what>basic chance to speak his native tonguemeans. Though with a percentage system 20 INT probably isn't high and would give 100% on flat rolls. "Idiots sometimes fail to express themselves" doesn't seem far fetched, though it might well be annoying.
This game right here:If your character attempts to do something roll a d6. An arbitrary number will be chosen by the dm.If you get lower than the number you also succeed on the thing you want to do. If you rolled a 2,3,4,5,6 your character dies after resolving the action.Character Creation: Choose a name and/or a description for your character. This has no effect except social ones.
>>97723609That's actually sounds pretty neat.
>>97725141The system language is just very old and it's expected that this would never be rolled, but they felt they needed to cover it, incase it ever came up.3d6 INT at character creation.The issue with language in older games is how can the sentence>basic chance to speak his native tonguecan ever be real without very specific context, and even then being able to speak a native tongue is very different than expression.
>>97725141the use cases are "what does this person sound like speaking this language", >25 sounding like a simpleton, >50 sounding accented, 50+ being normal, 75+ being eloquentas a skill you almost never roll the skill itself, but it functions as a cap for language-based skillsie you need to research some shit in a german library with your 78% research skill but your language (german) is a mere 40%, so you're stuck rolling at that 40 cause your grasp of the language is holding you back
>>97721425I’m pretty sure Call of Cthulhu deserves this honorific. I mean, the whole premise is that you’re trying to stop ancient forces of a typically cosmic scale from laying waste to the whole of civilization armed with, what? A .38 pistol and a mean right hook? Might as well just try and ask nicely. Hell, your character is so goddamn squishy that they can be rendered completely insane and narratively dead just by looking at a lot of these monsters,
>>97723292Classic. They introduced an alternative rule where your character gets ejected from their career and saddled with either crippling injuries or crippling medical debt at game start instead of outright dying, which is what later editions use.
>>97721700He’s no retarded he’s precious
>>97721425Any game where you can get death or badly crippled state after wrapping up char-gen.
Old-school D&D, pre-3e.>no, you don't have "death saving throws" or "negative HP". As soon as you hit 0 you die>no you don't get max HP for your first level hit die, you roll for it like every other hit die. Rolled a 1? Too bad; deal with it>What do you mean, "I'll just put all my points into CON then"? We don't do "stat points" here. You'll roll 3d6 for each stat and you'll live with the result (or more likely, you won't)
>>97721425D&D 4e, some dude involved in it murdered his wife.
>>97721425>>97730035>Any game where you can get death or badly crippled state after wrapping up char-genWhat is there besides Traveller?>Oldschool DnD 3d6 down the line can leave you with 3 in a stat (or 1-2 when racial modiers apply) which is pretty bad.>Some warhammer stuff (I think Black Crusade) can have you start with random Mutations where some combinations of can be crippling/deadly.>Infamously FATAL where you can get strength score so low you can't carry your own bodyweight.Anything else?
>>97721434>Well you can die during character creation in TravellerKek
>>97731383Not just some random dude, the guy (Joseph Eugene Batten) was lead developer for D&D 4e digital platform (virtual tabletop). The incident was a significant setback for the project and indirectly one of the reasons Wizards rushed moving from 4e to 5th.
>>97731409deadEarth and Gamma World both have mutations which can severely disable you, or kill you (in the case of deadEarth). FanWar (Fantasy Warplay) has randomized backstories which can occasionally make you a liability to the group (i.e. being unable to run, dying when someone dispels your spells, or being incapable of benefitting from most classes), but resurrection is common. Arduin also has randomized backstories, as well as randomized ability scores which use different dice for different races (not just modifiers). I actually think that games need more lethality and randomization, as long as the character is still able to commit suicide in-world (balanced by characters not immediately starting near each other, and GM effort being focused on pre-existing characters if the characters are split up, inorder to prevent constant rerolling).
>>97721700Guy with massive survivor's guilt just got stabbed through the heart and felt himself dying, woke up with blood everywhere but the wound inexplicably gone, and is freaking out that the world is unfair for sparing him while better people are allowed to die.The whole story of Fate/stay night is about Shirou being an insane, self-destructive person. First route is about him bonding with an equally self-destructive person, second route is about his future self trying to murder him for being such a dumbass, final route is about him being forced into impossible choices over who to save and eventually deciding to bond with a woman to unstable for normal relationships so that they can LARP as a normal couple together.
>>97731409Top of my head:The Witcher, the American one (dead or crippled)Twilight 2000 and 2013 (dead or crippled)The Riddle of Steel (dead)Neuroshima (extremely crippled characters that can't function, but aren't technically dead yet)Shadow of the Demon Lord (dead or crippled)Paranoia (dead or crippled, but depends on edition)
>>97731409>>97733267Oh, right:In [Prefix] Borg, it is entirely possible to make a character with just 1 HP, so you aren't dead YET
>>97728755>sky turn greensIM GOING INSANE SAVE ME NIGGERMAN!!!!! AIYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>97734495>Aurora borealis at this time of year at this time of day in this part of the country localized entirely within your kitchen?>Yes.>1d8 san damage
>>97734495>>97734507>Retard faggots who don't even get the reference
Stick Adventure
>>97734629>stop having fun!!!No! I've read only a few stories, but I'm slowly getting into it. I still don't buy the SAN mechanic, but it's just a game.So what story does it reference and I will go read it right now since Lovecraft is easy.
>>97721425FATAL, it's in the name
>>97724326>Even in D&D, players find cheesy ways around it, like pic related in Pathfinder, making resurrection cost like 200 gp for the restoration afterward.Before 3e, Raise Dead and Resurrection were risky with high costs. Both had a failure chance based on the targets Con. Raise Dead was limited to a number of days equal to the caster's level, permanently reduced the target's Con by 1 and put the target out of commission for a number of days equal to their time dead. Resurrection costs the caster a lot even though the target doesn't lose anything. The caster ends up aging 3 years and this can't do anything for a number of days equal to the targets Level or Hit Die. 3e turned returning to life into a gp cost.
>>97724326In Sword World, the difference between the common and monstrous races is their number of "soulscars". There's a playable race (Nightmares) representing mutant members of the common races who were born with a single soulscar; they have a tiefling-like appearance and are heavily ostracised. Likewise there are mutant monsters called "Weaklings" who are born with fewer soulscars than normal, giving them weaker abilities and a more humanlike appearance.The kicker is that each time you return from the dead you gain a soulscar, making you more monstrous in body and mind. If a soul is scarred completely, it becomes undead. As a result most people don't want to come back even if they can afford it (except crazies like adventurers).Overall this isn't too different from level loss + Level Adjustment of D&D, but it's a lot more flavourful. The concept of Weaklings even adds to 5e-style "monster PC but not really" races.
>>97724388>as much as people here love to clown on Delicious DungeonWe've had regular Dungeon Meshi threads for years, Dungeon Meshi topping lists of /tg/core manga + people bringing up Dungeon Meshi in related threads and no issue. Then Studio Trigger of all people made an anime based on it, and suddenly people came out the walls to scream about it.The same thing will happen to Heterogenous Linguistics if an anime studio ever gets their hands on it.>>97724593From what I remember>Dungeons are unearthly locations warped by concentrated magic, giving them the ability to trap souls; resurrection magic is only practical for people who died inside the dungeon, and doing it too often or after too long a time isn't good for your mind>You can't res without a body, which is often difficult to retrieve. When someone gets eaten by a dragon it's a race to slay the dragon and retrieve their remains before they're fully digested.>Someone gets fused with a monster under the control of an evil wizard, so resurrecting them as themselves requires cutting off the monster parts of their remains and preventing them from regenerating (by eating them so that they get incorporated into another being). Even this is imperfect - the subject returns with their own mind, but with scales/feathers on parts of their body.
>>97738122Given how retarded 3e combat could get, esp with DMs that would have more monsters teleport in and other dumb shit that didn't make sense and became super commonplace, I didn't mind that as much. i didn't feel bad having revivify up my sleeve when it prevented 3 character deaths.
>>97735042More like "stop being fucking retarded" and "it's just embarrassing to watch someone being this clueless".Hence: cringe.Now you have to off yourself, zoomer, for you're cringe
>>97742149>you can't make fun of media you don't know references to>YOU JUST CANT OKAY!!!!Roll 1d8 SAN loss, you just saw a post on the internet you don't like.
>>97734629what is the reference
>>97721434Fpbp
>>97721700He's literally insane. Like, not in the meme way, but actually clinically batshit.
>>97738895>>Dungeons are unearthly locations warped by concentrated magic, giving them the ability to trap souls; resurrection magic is only practical for people who died inside the dungeon, and doing it too often or after too long a time isn't good for your mind>>You can't res without a body, which is often difficult to retrieve. When someone gets eaten by a dragon it's a race to slay the dragon and retrieve their remains before they're fully digested.>>Someone gets fused with a monster under the control of an evil wizard, so resurrecting them as themselves requires cutting off the monster parts of their remains and preventing them from regenerating (by eating them so that they get incorporated into another being). Even this is imperfect - the subject returns with their own mind, but with scales/feathers on parts of their body.All decent points, but the first one especially. Just make it not possible for most people.
>>97721425Before Paranoia there was AD&D Dark Sun, where you built four 5th level characters (because you would not survive starting any lower than that) and you were very likely to die at least two or three times during the game.
Gonna throw MechWarrior 4e / ‘A Time of War’ into the discussion because I don’t see a lot of posts about it. It’s not even just about the ‘Mech combat, your average joe can get his chest cavity turned into shredded meat by a dinky little pistol in a single combat round. It stings more since character creation requires a spreadsheet to do effectively.
