Threshold Poll: Character Death and What's Changed! (Patreon)
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Greetings, Threshold patrons!
We're approaching out fourteenth session, and I want to revisit a topic that usually comes up in session zero: How do we handle the death of a player character? Counting Kala Sar'kaas, we have a total of eleven player characters for players to choose from. On the one hand this means the death of a single player character doesn't have the same impact as it does in a typical campaign; there's still ten more left. On the other hand, all of these characters have interesting stories still ahead of them. Now that we've gotten settled into the setting, there could be serious challenges ahead. So just as I would in any campaign, I want to know how you'd like to handle the death of a character.
- Let The Dice Decide. Play by standard fifth edition rules. Let the dice fall where they may, use standard death saves, and if someone dies, they die.
- Resurrection With A Price. We know there's a lot of strange powers with an interest in Threshold. We'll play by the standard rules, but if a character dies, they may be offered resurrection—be it by the Queen of the Dead, the Merchant of Misthaven, or someone else—but there will be a price that must be paid. Such a bargain would likely play out in a story hour.
- Lasting Injury. Characters won't die in this campaign, but a near-death experience will leave them with scars—either physical or psychological. This could result in a change in appearance or new personality traits.
A second question is if we want to add new characters to the roster of player characters. On the one hand, we already have more characters than we can play; on the other, there's many patrons who weren't around when we created the current cast who might enjoy having a voice in this process.
My final question is a small spoiler for the most recent session, though it reveals nothing about the action of the session itself—still, last chance to stop reading and back out if you don't want to know anything about that episode! Seriously, this poll is going to run for three days, so if you want to be completely unspoiled, you can just stop reading now and go watch it. But if you're still here: At the very end of session 12.5, the survivors return to find that more time has passed in Threshold than in Thelanis, and that something dramatic has changed while they were gone. While this was a fun zinger for the end of the episode, it's also a chance to shake up the story a little. But there's a few ways we can handle this, and I need a decision so I can start working on the next adventure.
Play it out. The next two sessions will focus on the characters who weren't part of the Thelanis arc, and the fate of Threshold will emerge from those sessions.
Vote on it. I'll present you all with a set of things that could have happened while Kala was away and you can decide which occurred; the next session will pick up where session 12.5 left off.
Surprise! You can leave the mystery entirely in my hands. Session 14 will pick up where 12.5 left off, and you'll all learn what's changed along with the players of that session.
Thanks to all of you for your input and your support!