Death System
From The Seven Cities
Contents |
Death
Death in Avlis is not the end, for PCs anyhow. PCs may return from the afterlife in three ways: by completing a death quest, through the spell Raise Dead, or through the spell Resurrection. -- NOTE - The Raise Dead and Resurrection spells are not quite functional on player corpses at this time.
Adventurers shall have a contract with the Temple of Hurine to try to bring them back upon their deaths; this is the IC explanation for how the death quest works. The cost for this shall be covered by the PC’s actions during the mandatory tutorial, and everything shall be explained then.
Death Penalties Summary
Death causes the PC's soul to be sent to the Fugue Plane.
Return is possible via a death quest that gets you out of the Fugue Plane in roughly 30 seconds (even 20-30 seconds, to account for lag). That includes travel time; from the moment you arrive, if you want out you should be gone within half a a minute or so. The death effects below apply, and there is a monetary fee to be paid at the Temple of Hurine (they raised you).
IC Experience of Death
Players shall receive messages upon PC death emphasizing how traumatic the experience is, and upon return to life shall receive messages stating that they don’t recall any details of the afterlife except that they don’t expect they’ll come back if they die again.
Corpse
When a PC dies, his body shall appear on the ground, called “A pile of stuff”, and it shall be a container holding his body, and all his possessions except those soulbound to him. Money shall remain with the body. When a PC is raised by the Clerics of Hurine or by another PC, the body shall disappear.
Corpses left unattended outside city areas are subject to looting.
Corpses can also be summoned at the Temple of Hurine, as a way of retrieving belongings that might otherwise be inaccessible. (Either the area where the corpse lies is too dangerous, or the server has reset and the body is longer there).
This option also results in a percentage loss of gold and each item on the corpse has a 5% chance of being "lost" (i.e. looted by bandits, or decomposed). As such, it is beneficial for players to make use of the Banking System to store their gold and belongings.
In addition to the above-stated risk, there is a fee the adventurer must pay to the temple for this service.
At levels 1-4, corpse summoning is free. At levels 5 and above, corpse summoning costs 10*Level^2 for each incident.
Resurrection Costs
Gold -- Cost per death. (50*# Of Deaths) + (10*Level)
Gold is intended as the basic cost and the price goes up with each death and more slowly per level. Alternatively, if a PC does not have gold they can choose to pay out of their experience. --NOTE CAREFULLY: if you choose to pay with experience, you will begin to lose reputation with the church of Hurine, if your reputation falls below a certain level, the Clerics will refuse to raise you, at which point your choices are to wait for a raise dead or Resurrection spell, or to permanently retire your character. This feature will be implemented fully as soon as we have donation quests in the game so that you can raise your reputation with the church of Hurine. Each time a PC dies, their death count increases.
- You pay the temple up-front to get "anchored" so that if you get whacked they are able to step in and help. When you set up your contract you'll get your first fee waived (so that players can set up their contract regardless of starting gold). Then every time you die, after you are returned, you'll be asked if you want to make a payment and be re-anchored for your next emergency. With scaling costs because it gets more difficult each time the fabric of the mortal body is interrupted (or whatever).
- if you don't have the gold to pay up front, you can come back at any time and make your deposit. If you die without having been anchored, the temple will still attempt to bring you back but it's much more difficult. You lose 25xp per level and your death count increases by 2. The temple won't require reimbursement but you might also lose a reputation point or two for not having stayed current on your payments.
- You can't lose more than 1 level through death. If you get to the XP threshold for the previous level, the temple won't raise you. You'll have to wait for PC raise. -- I'm not sure about this one yet, I'll have to edit/update this once our Lead Coder comes back from vacation.
- Resurrection by a PC does not raise your Death Count
