House Rules on Death and Dying?

[Black Omega]

I'm looking for ideas on house rules on death for my game. I'm running a Rokugan game that mixes in elements of Forgotten Realms. This has created a minor problem. FR characters are raised from the dead all the time. The DnD system seems based on the idea that past a certain level characters will get killed and brought back. In Rokugan, characters are not brought back from the dead, nor would they be willing even if someone tried.

So i'm looking for a way to make it a little tougher for characters to die, so the situation is a little more even between the two sides. What house rules have other people used regarding death?

 

[Amal Shukup]

So i'm looking for a way to make it a little tougher for characters to die, so the situation is a little more even between the two sides. What house rules have other people used regarding death?

We made a few small tweaks to the Dying rules for our campaign, These are mostly based on the premise that most PCs have higher than average CON. The net result has been that characters die slightly less often.

Death:
Characters die when their current hit points drop to negative CON (not negative 10. IE: a character with 14 CON dies at -14).

Spontaneous Stabilization:
At the end of each round (starting the round the character dropped below 0), roll d% to see whether the character stabilizes. The character has a CON% chance to become stable. IE: a character with 12 CON has a 12% chance of stabilizing each round). If the character doesn't, the character loses 1 hit point.

You'll note that this makes any CON draining attack or Poison really, really scary...

We've also ruled that a character who fails their save against 'death from massive damage' falls unconscious (mortally wounded) and actually dies one round later - giving his allies a slight chance at intervantion...

Amal Shukup

 

[Plane Sailing]

So i'm looking for a way to make it a little tougher for characters to die, so the situation is a little more even between the two sides. What house rules have other people used regarding death?

We use a concept borrowed from Star Wars d20.

When you reach -10hp, you must make a Fort ST (DC = amount you are below 0). If you fail, you are dead instantly, if you succeed you are dying and unconcious - you must make the same ST each minute until you roll a 19 or 20 (and stabilise naturally), or are stabilised by a healing check/magic.

This rule has prevented about 8 raise-deads in my game, thank goodness. The game runs a little more like heroic fantasy and a little less like a computer game such as "Doom" where the heroes die and respawn

Cheers

 

[hong]

I use a modified VP/WP system, which effectively gives everyone an extra Con hit points before dying. This has saved overconfident PCs on several occasions. The downside is that it also means mooks are harder to kill, so if you're into chambara-style action with master samurai plowing through hordes of faceless enemies, it might not be the best solution.

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/vpwp_dnd.htm

 

[Hygric]

I apply character's con mod to the -10 threshold, it allows that little bit longer to get to people to bring 'em back. I am also toying with the idea of adding a characters level to the threshold, so a 20th level dwarf with con 20 could bleed down to -35 before dying. This tweak is not so much to give longer times of bleeding to death, as to compensate for a character on low HP being killed outright in one hit with the large damage that opponents at high levels can do in one swing.

 

[CCamfield]

I haven't figured on exactly what I'm going to use in my campaign. One suggestion I saw in a Usenet newsgroup thread about this was exactly the same as Amal's...

Sean K. Reynolds has a variant on his website, basically allowing characters to drop to -(10 + Con) but keeping the 10% chance of stabilization.

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/variantdyingrule.html

 

[ThomasBJJ]

I currently use the "character dies when his negative Hp score = Con score, instead of -10 Hp."

It has helped a number of times, but there have still been quite a few fatalities between the two campaigns we play in in the last few weeks. Last tuesday 3 out of 7 PC's died in the climactic battle, only one was from failing to stabalize for 8 rounds.

 

[Malin Genie]

IMC the stabilisation check is a 19 or 20 on a d20. I have changed the Toughness Feat to give +3 to Stabilisation checks as well as +3 hp.

Unaccountably it's more popular now and has saved a death or two.

 

[Kevin O'Reilly]

After 0 hits we go to CON damage.

1/3 of Con damage character can still take actions - character fatigued (all checks -2)

1/3 to 2/3 Con damage partial actions only - charater exhausted (all checks -6)

over 2/3 Con or Con reduced to 5 character collapses Fort save to stay conscious