How do you handle death?

[shilsen]

I almost completely took out death in my game(s) and am much the happier for it. PCs get to use action pts (and now swashbuckling cards) to stabilize at -9 when a blow or effect would have slain them. A PC can in theory be slain if targeted by an attack after that, which has happened in my Eberron campaign only once in nearly 60 sessions.

 

[Pierson_Lowgal]

Save My Game Feature from wizards.com
So Many Characters, So Little Time 7/28/2006

In a high-lethality campaign, players often feel less attached to their characters because they have a strong sense that the characters won't last. House Rule: Death penalty is a negative level, more or less. Or they may feel that their characters are not really involved personally in the campaign story. They might be interested in it, but if their characters aren't really connected to it, then characters are basically ciphers -- any other hero would do just as well. Characters become placeholders in the campaign.

My current house rule: Death results in following penalty until next level-up: -1 on attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, saving throws and lose one spell slot of highest level.

 

[exempt]

IMC death is handled just as in the books, except that finding someone who can raise you is very difficult -- even higher-level players don't automatically have access to raise dead, etc. That makes dying arduous and the seed for an adventure in itself. It's not as onerous (to the players) as losing Con.

 

[EvilGM]

Find someone capable of casting rez
Make a deal with said person
Provide material components for rez (which are x10 listed price)
Do not lose a level when rezzed, instead lose 1 Constitution permanently

Clerics are often very fickle about casting rez and will certainly expect glorious thanks and some degree of "servitude".

 

[Yair]

I follow the core rules. Doesn't anyone do that anymore?

In low levels, raise dead is just too expensive to be an option, so death matters. At higher levels, death means losing a level which hurts very much - I've had players prefer not to be raised, instead drawing up a new character. (At very high levels death doesn't even lower your level.) I don't think this "diminishing" of death is a problem, it isn't in my game. There are still plenty of ways to truly die for me to scare the PCs with if I want to (barghests are a favorite), there is still the looming threat of a TPK, and so on. The players have by this point invested a lot in their characters, and I don't think it's a stretch to let them come back from the dead - if they want to, and the rest of the party can arrange it (finding a high-level cleric, bringing him the body in time, paying the money...). [There are plenty of Churches out there that would be willing to help the PCs out - old allies, members from the party cleric's church, deities that care more about the money and favors the PCs will owe them, and so on; so finding a high-level willing cleric isn't generally a problem.]

My next campaign will be a low-magic one. No resurrections, period. But I'll also have no obligatory character deaths, period. Instead, I'll use something like the following rule:

Deathbed Conversion: If you want to, you can refuse to die. You're instead only unconscious and severely wounded, and will recover to a stabilized state at fully-negative hit points [-10] after a few hours. Work with the DM to decide what effects dying had had one you, however, based on the manner of your death. Here are some guidelines:
* Death from bleeding (failing to stabilize) will probably not leave a physical mark, but may scar you emotionally.
* Death from some attack that directly takes you to death [-11 to -19 hp] will lead to scarring and physical marks. If the fireball sends you to -15 hp, for example, you'll probably suffer at least some permanent burn marks.
* If the attack lowered your hp far below the minimum, to -20 hp or less, a disability might be in order (perhaps you lost an arm, or an eye, or maybe the wounds lower your Con).
* In some cases, death may be unavoidable. I for one can't think of a manner that someone will survive being quartered, for example.

 

[Jhaelen]

If someone's character dies, the new character starts in the middle of the previous level just as if he was resurrected.
Another option is the party's druid who's finally able to cast reincarnate.
Except in the setting's single major city there's no way to get resurrected by npcs.

 

[DarkJester]

We generally just eat it and make new characters. No one in my group really went for the whole resurrection thing. I'm just starting to DM another group this Thursday though, and we'll figure out what to do there if the situation ever arises.

 

[Jack99]

We generally just eat it and make new characters. No one in my group really went for the whole resurrection thing. I'm just starting to DM another group this Thursday though, and we'll figure out what to do there if the situation ever arises.

This was precisely one of the reasons why I was asking how you guys handle it. What DarkJester mentions is exactly how the tendencies have been in our campaigns lately, and I would like to change that, as I prefer running campaigns in which people retain their PCs for a long time, but on the other hand, I dont want to pull any punches and cheat too much in order for them not to die.

 

[ThirdWizard]

We do the XP debt. You don't gain XP again until you pay off half the XP needed to go from your previous level to your current level. This XP cannot be used for spells or magic items. If the PC dies with an XP debt, they don't gain another full XP penalty, instead they gain an XP debt equal to half the normal penalty. If they have two penalty pools they're still paying off, its 1/3 and so on. Debts are paid off separately, with the highest being paid off completely before moving onto the next.

Generally, one PC goes down per session, or perhaps 2 every 3 sessions or something along those lines. With the high mortality rate, RAW rules for raising didn't seem feasible.