Not dead yet: Options for death and dying?

[Meatboy]

I'm looking for any leads on optional death and dying rules for d20 (3.x stuff). I don't really like the tracking negative HP or times knocked down or what have you. I was envisioning something where you could choose consequences instead of death, maybe keep it old school and roll on a chart. Anyways just wondering if something like this were kicking about? I'm not adverse to doing it myself but hey if its already out there...

 

[steenan]

I used a modified system for wounds and dying a few years ago, when I ran 3e.

It assumed very abstract HPs (that means - no meaningful hits until one goes to zero) and aimed low lethality (but I also removed all resurrection-type spells).

It goes like this:

You don't track HPs below zero. When you're at zero, you're out of fight. No need for stabilization, but you also don't get up when you receive a healing spell. You need 5-10 minutes to regain consciousness.
But you have a choice when you are down: you may take a wound to get back to action.

A wound is a lasting penalty. The player decides to take it or not, but the GM defines what exactly it is.
A wound only starts affecting the character when the current scene ends. So, you continue fight with no penalty, but you are penalized in all further scenes.

First time you take a wound, it's a minor one. You take -1 to rolls and/or static numbers that it would affect (eg. movement rolls with wounded leg, perception and social rolls with swollen eye and so on). After healing to full HPs and a full night's sleep, the wound is gone.

If you have a minor wound and take one more, it's serious. It's -2 to appropriate rolls (as above) and it needs a week of full rest to recover.
If you have a serious wound and take one more, it's severe. It's -2 to all rolls and lasts for two levels.
If you have a severe wound and take one more, you die at the end of the scene.



In other words, PCs only die on player request, but they may be easily knocked out and kept down without a risk of accidental death. It allowed me to play hard as a GM without fear of TPK and it allowed players to act heroically, escalating stakes when they fought for something they considered important.
At first, the wounds and associated penalties seemed minor - but when things got hard, the penalties cumulated. Serious wounds need more time to recover than players could easily spend on it (I run games where NPCs are active and typically don't wait until the heroes feel ready to face them). And severe wounds require quite a lot of adventuring with the penalty to get rid of it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One thing I have always done: You don't die in any round (defined by your initiative--being the last to act doesn't mean you can't get help) that you receive magical healing, regardless of anything (short of a deity) that would otherwise mean death. Mortals simply don't have the power to actually kill one's life force, all they can do is damage the body to the point that it can't sustain life.

This does *NOT* remove whatever "killed" you, that must be done separately. If you're down simply due to damage you'll need enough healing to get back up. If you died due to some sort of death effect you get a new save against the effect (and deathward can remove the need to even make the save.)

The process is very traumatic, you lose any spells or other rechargeable powers.

I keep changing my mind on exactly what other effects happen but since I specifically avoid spelling out the details that doesn't matter. (All the players need to know is that the guy can be saved if the problem is fixed. He won't be permanently damaged, no promises on temporary matters.)

 

[Meatboy]

I used a modified system for wounds and dying a few years ago, when I ran 3e.

It assumed very abstract HPs (that means - no meaningful hits until one goes to zero) and aimed low lethality (but I also removed all resurrection-type spells).

It goes like this:

You don't track HPs below zero. When you're at zero, you're out of fight. No need for stabilization, but you also don't get up when you receive a healing spell. You need 5-10 minutes to regain consciousness.
But you have a choice when you are down: you may take a wound to get back to action.

A wound is a lasting penalty. The player decides to take it or not, but the GM defines what exactly it is.
A wound only starts affecting the character when the current scene ends. So, you continue fight with no penalty, but you are penalized in all further scenes.

First time you take a wound, it's a minor one. You take -1 to rolls and/or static numbers that it would affect (eg. movement rolls with wounded leg, perception and social rolls with swollen eye and so on). After healing to full HPs and a full night's sleep, the wound is gone.

If you have a minor wound and take one more, it's serious. It's -2 to appropriate rolls (as above) and it needs a week of full rest to recover.
If you have a serious wound and take one more, it's severe. It's -2 to all rolls and lasts for two levels.
If you have a severe wound and take one more, you die at the end of the scene.



In other words, PCs only die on player request, but they may be easily knocked out and kept down without a risk of accidental death. It allowed me to play hard as a GM without fear of TPK and it allowed players to act heroically, escalating stakes when they fought for something they considered important.
At first, the wounds and associated penalties seemed minor - but when things got hard, the penalties cumulated. Serious wounds need more time to recover than players could easily spend on it (I run games where NPCs are active and typically don't wait until the heroes feel ready to face them). And severe wounds require quite a lot of adventuring with the penalty to get rid of it.

I too am treating HP as abstractions, which is part of why I'm looking for something like this. What you have is close but I was hoping for something a little more severe. making a choice between death and a -1 penalty isn't much of a choice, however death or losing a hand, or bartering with a demon for your soul. Those seem like they have ramifications for characters.