How would you feel about this Returned from Death-rule?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The loss of levels due to death can be explained by the traumatic "experience", some kind of coma-based brain damage and similar things.

Maybe it is a "security" method of the gods/universe to avoid that people remember the time when they were dead. (And only True Resourection is powerful enough to find the exact memories to be erased).
If you use this interpretation be aware that you have to change some roleplaying aspects - someone back from the death might have forgotten what happened the last "level", so you must explain him why he was so stupid to start an attack with a "terrible, fire breathing dragon".

Hmm, I think I will implement this a bit in my upcoming Dragonstarbased campaign. (I like my own idea... )

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Quickbeam]

I really like the XP debt concepts offered within this thread. Our group has never considered such an option, but I think it will be weel received when I present these ideas during our next session.

As for afflictions and penalties resulting from death, our group does something a bit different. Depending on the means by which a characters dies (falling a great distance; dragon breath; being gored by a bull; etc.), the player and I decide what lingering effects there are afterwards. This works particularly well in my current group, since most of the players like adding flavor to their PC's. One of the characters was mauled to death by a dire bear, and the player chose to have the PC lose an eye as his "affliction." Upon his return from the grave, the PC chose to place a pearl found in the bear's cave in his eyesocket as a constant reminder of the event.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I really like the XP debt concepts offered within this thread. Our group has never considered such an option, but I think it will be weel received when I present these ideas during our next session.

As for afflictions and penalties resulting from death, our group does something a bit different. Depending on the means by which a characters dies (falling a great distance; dragon breath; being gored by a bull; etc.), the player and I decide what lingering effects there are afterwards. This works particularly well in my current group, since most of the players like adding flavor to their PC's. One of the characters was mauled to death by a dire bear, and the player chose to have the PC lose an eye as his "affliction." Upon his return from the grave, the PC chose to place a pearl found in the bear's cave in his eyesocket as a constant reminder of the event.

That's pretty cool although unorthodox. If it works in your group I can only congratulate you!

 

[Master of Monkeys]

When raised, reincarnated or resurrected (not true resurrection or reincarnation) from the dead roll 1d3 times on the following afflictions list.

I wonder if you could use a similar list for other things, like a list of powers a wizard could get by spending some xp. Like if a 5th level wizard wanted +10 to speed he could spend some of his xp to get it. Then again, they would probably get the same powers by leveling instead of spending xp, and then you get into replacing the level system and that just gets messy.