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Message: <blockquote data-quote="azrael489" data-source="post: 4557522" data-attributes="member: 49908">It seems to me that your big mistake is that you're getting way, WAY, WAY ahead of yourself. Your artifact idea could work and could be cool, but I'm really not sure why you're so eager to set a system in place.PC deaths don't occur often (in most campaigns, anyway) and for that reason the best advice I think I can give you is not to worry about being prepared for the instant a party member buys the farm. Deal with it THEN. This allows you to adapt to the situation and act appropriately and as needed.I find dealing with PC deaths on a case-by-case basis allows the best solution to be used each time, and that figuring that out each time it happens is by NO means a big deal. If the PC died heroically and the player's OK with rolling up a new character, do that. If a powerful NPC owes the party a favor, they can call it in to get their friend resurrected. You can add a Rod of Resurrection with a couple charges or a Scroll of Raise Dead to the treasure hoard of the despicable villain responsible for the terrible tragedy, or maybe the party can afford a Raise Dead, or whatever's appropriate. You came up with the artifact without too much trouble, and though it might be unpolished it's interesting and has promise. You should have no trouble figuring out how to handle the dead PC well before the rest of the party does (and you can always take 5 for bathroom breaks, snack-fetching, and to talk things over with the player if you need to).The other big advantage with crossing that bridge when you come to it is that you avoid the huge problem with your request: you can't make death both meaningful and never-permanent. It's just not possible. Death's permanence is what makes it meaningful. You can penalize the party for a death financially through cost of raising, experiencially through XP loss, etc., but then by definition it's not death, and it doesn't carry the weight that permanent PC loss does. It just doesn't work.Dealing with things case-by-case, though, makes it pretty clear to your players that there's no reason their next death will be "fixed". After all, if they didn't have that favor to call in/hadn't found that magic item/weren't sent on this mission by a cleric with Raise Dead, they'd be burying their friend.The last point I'll make along this line is that, as much as I respect your goal of never forcing a player to roll a new character (and I mostly run things that way as well), sometimes they really should die. If a character does something exceptionally stupid, for example, rather than being the victim of unlucky dice or the like, well... you kind of have to let them die or you devalue smart decisions. By all means keep your options open so you can toss them a line if they die well in the line of duty, but you just as much need to be able to say "Ouch dude, tough break. Well at least now the rest of the party knows it's not cinnamon that keeps vampires away, right? Here's 4d6..." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />If you're really married to working something out now though, and to PCs being impossible to truly kill (though again, IMO this is one of the worst things a DM can let a player know) I'd suggest keeping the following in mind:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Death should be a big deal - err on the side of too harsh soas not to diminish your players' desire to protect their characters</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Carefully consider consequences - For example, as written, your artifact changes the party dynamic/forces them together, it drives the storyline, it could get them lynched if someone figures out they're "behind" the "plague of dessication", etc. Those could all be great, fun ideas, just make sure you want them before you're stuck with them</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Charges are your friend - I mentioned a Rod of Resurrection with 2-3 charges above. That's 2-3 "free deaths", but after that dead's dead. The players are likely to protect those charges as if they were each other's lives. Just make sure they know they've only got a few (whether or not you tell them the exact number)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Beware the "death spiral" - not just with stats, but in things like your artifact's civilian deaths; I like the idea, but if the dead grow exponentially the PCs might decide the most "heroic" thing for them to do is retire somewhere nice and safe...</li> </ul></blockquote>

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