Bay 12 Games Forum

"The tunnel's collapsed. I'm not sure we can walk through there. But I think I have an idea where it exits out at, if you all want to follow me."

"But, um, if you'd rather know for sure than follow my intuition, we can spend time clearing out the debris. I'd understand. _{I wouldn't believe me either.}"

"halfway viable character" is missing the point.  Playing with faulted characters is how you actually get enjoyment out of overcoming obstacles in the campaign.


The game really isn't supposed to be "Group of murderhobo mary-sues destroy world while saving it."  It's really supposed to be "Wow, that was hard! But we WON!"
Min-maxed characters are mary-sues. They are designed to have nothing but perks, and every conceivable source of weakness eliminated or patched over with rule-lawyer armor.

The common counter-argument is that "Yeah, but dying is no fun bro."

I contend that it COULD be VERY fun. See for instance, the many Pen and Paper games out there, like Paranoia. In that game, death is integrated as a basic mechanic, since player characters are controlling a replaceable cloned avatar. 

Quote from: wiki

Setting
The game's main setting is an immense, futuristic city called Alpha Complex. Alpha Complex is controlled by The Computer, a civil service AI construct (a literal realization of the "Influencing Machine" that some schizophrenics fear). The Computer serves as the game's principal antagonist, and fears a number of threats to its 'perfect' society, such as The Outdoors, mutants, and secret societies (especially Communists). To deal with these threats, The Computer employs Troubleshooters, whose job is to go out, find trouble, and shoot it. Player characters are usually Troubleshooters, although later game supplements have allowed the players to take on other roles, such as High-Programmers of Alpha Complex.

The player characters frequently receive mission instructions from the Computer that are incomprehensible, self-contradictory, or obviously fatal if adhered to, and side-missions (such as Mandatory Bonus Duties) that conflict with the main mission. They are issued equipment that is uniformly dangerous, faulty, or "experimental" (i.e., almost certainly dangerous and faulty). Additionally, each player character is generally an unregistered mutant and a secret society member (which are both termination offenses in Alpha Complex), and has a hidden agenda separate from the group's goals, often involving stealing from or killing teammates. Thus, missions often turn into a comedy of errors, as everyone on the team seeks to double-cross everyone else while keeping their own secrets. The game's manual encourages suspicion between players, offering several tips on how to make the gameplay as paranoid as possible.

Every player's character is assigned six clones, known as a six-pack, which are used to replace the preceding clone upon his or her death. The game lacks a conventional health system; most wounds the player characters can suffer are assumed to be fatal. As a result, Paranoia allows characters to be routinely killed, yet the player can continue instead of leaving the game. This easy spending of clones tends to lead to frequent firefights, gruesome slapstick, and the horrible yet humorous demise of most if not all of the player character's clone family. Additional clones can be purchased if one gains sufficient favour with the Computer.

The Paranoia rulebook is unusual in a number of ways; demonstrating any knowledge of the rules is forbidden, and most of the rulebook is written in an easy, conversational tone that often makes fun of the players and their characters, while occasionally taking digs at other notable role-playing games.

The deal is that people get so hung up on having "THE *PERFECT* character!" that they cannot abide that character's death.  There's ways that this could be overcome, if a streamlined chargen process was used, and combined with the plot narrative.

say for instance, you could use a mechanic like the Dungeon Master computer game:  There's "altars of VI" you can put dead player characters into, and it resurrects them with re-rolled stats, but keeps their class template.  GM Fiat is totally a thing, after all.  If instead of trying to create "the perfect character" gussied up to the hilt in rule-lawyer armor, you create a very solid template formula, then such "reincarnations" wouldn't be that big a deal. The best part is, since it's the same character's "soul" just getting re-fleshed via magic, they would have good reason to remember all the traps and travails of the dungeon they just got killed in, and their old incarnation's body would still be there for them to loot their gear from. Death of their character just means their stats get rerolled, and maybe some new randomly picked (using a weighted list and random selection and filter against base stat reqs) feats. It could add a lot of fun to a session.  You just have to let go of the notion of having "MarySue, The immortal and untouchable fantasy vehicle for wish fulfillment" as your character.