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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ravenheart" data-source="post: 5448908" data-attributes="member: 72088">Seeing as this has grown from its humble beginnings, I guess I have an additional, unstated design goal here - making death mean something more than ultimate action denial. How I can reach this goal is what I'm trying to figure out. There is that unwritten rule of the DM, isn't there? Where you don't  coup de grace the unconscious player when you have the chance - why?  Its even suggested that you refrain from such action - but the rules are  there so what's stopping you? Is it because its "unfair" somehow? But  why would some rules be less fair than others? Some monsters even depend  on a coup de grace! Your players can do it, no question about it, but  how often does that really come up? No, its because killing a character is the worst thing you can do to  your players. You end up with a player at your table without anything to  do. And even if its only temporary, you've removed him/her from the  story and role-playing, maybe even social aspect of the game. And this affects everything, including the other players - suddenly they are one man down, and have to go through significant trouble in bringing him back.Sure this could be solved by the player playing a companion character until their PC is raised or they make a new one, or the party can embark on a heroic quest or storyline to retrieve their fallen comrades soul from the underworld. But that should ideally be the exception, not the rule, right?Well I guess they would be, especially in regards to area and close  attacks, and of course concerning automatic and ongoing damage. Maybe treating them as active threats is more descriptive of what I'm trying to convey?   As incapacitated PCs are still in the fight (so to speak), the more reason for the orc to finish them off (with a coup de grace) before they crawl up and stab him in the back etc. And it won't be "unfair" if they don't really die, as per my idea.And note that I specifically called out that  you "can't use attack powers" while incapacitated. Not sure if that is sufficiently phrased to consider all attack actions, but on the other hand maybe it shouldn't be? Sustaining powers for instance, is it an attack action? Or would that be more case by case?Not too easy as you might suffer wounds more often than you would otherwise die (due to being coup de graced, for instance). And as I clarified in my edit, they would still be out of that particular fight.If you want to ramp up the challenge, bring in more or higher level critters if you like. The risk isn't as daunting with immediate death out of the picture. And this makes capturing the party by "killing" them rules-friendly.Yeah, I really wanted to reward players (and the group for resurrecting their fellow) for sticking with their characters. My inital though was to give these feats out for free when you return to life, but that might have been over the top. I could even see this as some form of feat-chain (like bloodline/heritage feats), where you get perks for every feat and powers you can swap out. That, or maybe just me being unclear. I tend to get misunderstood from time to time, and even more so when I communicate in English as it isn't my native tongue! Speaking of language, I just noticed I've been writing coup de grace with a "the" instead of a "de" in this entire thread - d'oh! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Edit mode initiated...One final thought: What if a player had the choice of either dying OR receiving a wound, particularly with the epic destiny features in mind?</blockquote>

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