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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6487049" data-attributes="member: 6677017">I don't run every game the same (for instance, the party TPKed in my last one-shot, and I'm planning my next one to make that the most likely--but not guaranteed--result), but there are some commonalities.First, I run my campaigns on the simulationist side, so I like injury to matter a bit more than the default. Second, however, I think each campaign has a social contract involved, and I think it is good to get those expectations out in the open and agreed upon. For instance, in my LMoP campaign, I'm running it by the book, with the rules more or less as written, and that's as complex as the social contract goes. I assured the party I wouldn't let the wild mage TPK them in the first few levels, but I otherwise have no specific safety nets that aren't assumed by standard 5e. If a character were to die and the cleric wasn't able to use the single revivify scroll on him/her, the party would be free to take their corpse to Neverwinter and pay the 500gp to get an NPC cleric to cast a raise dead, since I'm assuming Neverwinter has a cleric of appropriate level, and the presentation of resurrection magic in the core rule books implies it should be easy to get to a raise dead if you need one.But I will probably never run a 5e game "by the book" again, not because it isn't fun, just because it isn't the specific kind of fun I'm going for. I prefer a world where death is about the worst thing that can happen to a character, and players should play their characters smartly and cautiously to avoid death. It's difficult to create that sort of attitude in players without giving death bite.On the other hand, I do not believe in causing permanent damage to a PC without the possibility of that being an agreed upon component of the campaign and characters being made with that in mind. It's an issue of character identity and player ownership. If my concept of my character is a dashing and agile dilettante with a perfect face, then it is just unacceptable to me for him to end up with a permanent limp and a nasty scar. Same thing occurs with level drain or anything else that causes a character to become permanent less powerful than the rest of party. It's not the same character, and the dice or the DM took away ownership of character identity from me. I don't want that done, and I don't do it to my players. If I'm playing a game where it is possible, that's fine, as long as I know it is possible. And in such a situation I will make a character whose sense of identity isn't all that important to me or isn't pre-.So how to make this all fit together in 5e?Healing: I'm probably going with the HD only healing (no hit points healed overnight) and healer's kit required to use HD during a short rest. Second Wind can't be activated unless you are below half hit points, and provides temp hit points. The Healer feat is right out.Injury: The Lingering Wounds table is a little too harsh for me, but I'm going to try a toned down version (Con save for reduced permanency of effects) in one particular adventure and see how much it slows down the game.Resurrection: The price of raise dead and resurrection is multiplied by 10. True resurrection is already expensive enough, so I'll leave it as is. I'm not sure what to do with reincarnate yet. I'm unsure on revivify also. It's basically just magical CPR, but it is very valuable for a group to have it compared to not having it. Perhaps too much so. The death penalty that normally gets reduced by 1 after each long rest instead gets reduced by 1 after each month. That is where the real bite comes from. If you die the party will either have to take a lot of downtime waiting for you to get back up to fully functional status, or have to deal with you being hindered for a while--and if you don't have time for downtime that can hurt.There are also non-mechanical aspects of being raised that are important to keep in mind. You might come back from the afterlife with another creature secretly trailing you, or your body might actually be possessed by someone other than you, or some being of power over there might simply be upset about your being snatched away from them. These actually taking place are extremely rare--1% of the time or less--but everyone knows this kind of stuff happens in the stories, and therefore if you get raised from the dead superstitious people are very wary of you. People of power who need the goodwill of their constituents (like nobility and royalty) are rarely raised from the dead for exactly that reason. Villains who just want to be feared are fine with getting raised, and adventurers are generally viewed as sort of sketchy folks anyway. If a great hero gets raised from the dead, even by a good cleric, there may still be some initial wariness, but people are normally going to accept them back after sufficient time has passed that they've proven that they are still the same old good-guy.So for PCs it's basically expensive to get raised, plus people will mistrust you, at least for a while, if they know you've died and come back. So, a major hassle.How often should PCs die? Difficult to say. With all these assumptions in place (including my slowed advancement XP tables), assuming the types of players I tend to have, I'd expect a PC death every few levels.How often should a TPK happen? Rarely to never.How often should player death or a TPK be irreversible? Never, unless that is part of the established expectations at the beginning of the campaign. Unless it's a one shot. Then all bets are off. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />Sounds like the Lingering Injuries rules on page 272, perhaps eliminating the ability to fix it with magic.</blockquote>

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