Some linears are harder than others, in that the monsters are harder, so the PCs need better tactics and more effort to avoid being injured and incapacitated. This is a good thing.
It seems to be a popular idea that, as hard linears carry more risk, they should also carry more reward.
The question is: What form should risk take, and what form should reward take?
People don't seem to like TPK as a risk, because all too often it happens because of an overstatted encounter rather than any actual errors on the part of the character party. It's still going to happen occasionally, but it should be rare.
Alternatively, there's the risk of character death without the whole party getting chewed up. While people, on the whole, seem happier with this than with TPK, it has a problem. It kind of necessitates monsters stabbing people while they're down. Since a downed character can be killed in less than three seconds, this needs to be done carefully. Barring introducing an "execute" mechanic into the system (because, let's face it, we're changing enough already), we can handle this by having monsters grandstand, slowly torturing their victim, and leaving somewhere between ten and twenty seconds before striking the killing blow, to give the other characters time to charge over and save their friend's life. This introduces the risk of character death, while still making it something that only happens if the players screw up.
One of the problems I can see with this is that the player who screws up (by not running to the rescue) isn't the one who gets killed.
A brief aside: Currently, we don't have any explicit contract that monsters should avoid killing downed players. This, in some cases, can lead to bad feeling. However, if we did have such a contract, we might see an increase in PCs playing possum in order to avoid being killed, which I don't like very much either. Suggestions on a postcard.
For risks less severe than death, how about maiming? Monsters can quite easily hack off a character's limb, thus incapacitating them for several weeks. It's been suggested that a particularly cruel group of monsters could drag one of the wounded PCs away with them, necessitating a rescue later. Monsters could also quite easily rob unconscious players, depriving them of money, potions, magic items, and maybe even a mage's focus. There might well be an opportunity to get these back later in the linear.
Depending on how Alchemy is done and how common and how expensive healing potions are, a hard linear might require much more expenditure of IC resources to keep the party on their feet. This is the "wear the party down gradually" approach that doesn't work very well at the moment, largely due to regenerating mana.
There is also the risk of failing the mission without actually suffering much in the way of personal injury. In order for this to be workable, though, the linear needs to be set up with some pre-planned rules for what will cause the PCs to fail the mission. I can think of many examples and will gladly post them if people are interested.
There are other risks, many of which have already been discussed.
Now, rewards. Currently, we vary the amount of XP given out depending on how hard the linear was, but since "hard linears" don't really carry any more risk of death than easy ones (since we try our damnedest to avoid TPK) this seems slightly odd. It has been suggested that all linears should carry the same XP reward, but that IC rewards should vary depending on difficulty. I like this idea. Depending on what we do with monster XP, I think 8 (if we keep monster XP) or 10 (if we don't) are good values.
It has also been suggested that we have the occasional high-risk linear with higher XP reward but also greater danger of TPK. The suicidal defense of the East Gate at the pre-banquet bash was an excellent example of this. It would, of course, be made clear to the players who wished to participate that this is a Very Dangerous Linear, and we'd try not to drag any characters into it unless the players had already expressed wishes for a suicide mission.
Comment, and I'll add more stuff.
OP: Valtiel
I would like to see more IC rewards for linearing. My impression is that at the moment, there don't tend to me many, not so much as a matter of policy but just because when people are writing and setting linears under pressure, adding potential rewards is an added complication, and also because I suspect people underestimate the tendency of linearing parties to miss things (was there any midnight orchid or whatever it was called on the Sleeper Linear? I didn't see any - did any of the rest of the party?). I would urge anyone writing a linear to include a couple of places where the party not merely could come away with IC advantage if they do the right things, but probably will come away with IC advantage if they act in expected fashion. --Jacob
Something that has come to my attention recently: What do we do if an encounter halfway through the linear turns out to be harder than anticipated, or the character party have terrible tactics, and they end up maimed and out of healing? The way I see it, our options are:
Obviously, none of these options is going to please everyone, and #3 is based on an IC decision - if the PCs don't want to cut their losses and run, the most we can do is have the character ref be pessimistic at them. #1 kind of sucks but at least doesn't seem as contrived as bonus healing from the character party's point of view, although it does mean the linear will be mostly easy encounters and one very hard one. We normally go for #2, but some linears might give the party an IC choice between running for it and dying a heroes death. My preferred option would be to give them the chance to run for it, and if they don't, drop some bonus healing in a few encounters down the line so they have to fight for it.
Thoughts?
OP: Valtiel
PCs screwing up an encounter leaving them in trouble strikes me as an entirely different thing from statting or positioning of an encounter leaving them in trouble. The former should, IMO, leave the PCs in rather more trouble than the latter. I am in general in favour of a solution that lets the linear run to the end unless the PCs choose to run, because I feel I've got a better afternoon's entertainment that way. If that requires Emergency Healing (which can easily come back to bite you in the arse next interactive) or downstatting (to an extent, particularly if the screwup isn't the PCs' fault) then so be it. --Pufferfish