DEATH IN LORENVALE
A grim subject, death. As many opinions exist on the place and/or importance of death in a D&D campaign as there are players to form them. No player likes having his PC die. Even with several means available to bring the dead back to life, the PC’s death is an expensive nuisance at best. Some campaigns make it easier to stay alive by adjusting the hit points, armor class, etc. Others make it less painful by lowering the cost to be raised, removing the penalties of death (level loss), etc. Still other campaigns make death a horrible thing, and something nigh impossible to return from, or at least cost prohibitive.
Players don’t like to lose their characters, but if the likelihood were infinitesimally small for that to happen, where would be the challenge? The player must be faced with the possibility of loss if his plans for killing the colossal evil dragon don’t work out; thus he must plan carefully and execute flawlessly. If he doesn’t, the dragon kills him. But if he does, oh sweet joy. Satisfaction is stripped when dying costs little (or nothing) financially or physiologically, or if those 12 level drains are all given back anyway. However, if death were made too painful, no one would risk it. Adventurers would become an increasingly rarer breed, and the game would be reduced to lots of really bad chase scenes as the world became overrun with goblins and kobolds.
Death in a D&D campaign should be balanced. It should be feared, but the PC should have a few options for staying alive. When—not if—death occurs, there should be means available to overcome it, but these means should not be common nor cheap. The Lorenvale campaign attempts to find this balance. We grant level-dependent defense bonuses to creep the armor class upward and we have a feat that allows the PC to die not at –10, but at his negative CON score. But at the same time, we’ve made the financial cost of coming back rather high (but not exorbitant) and we require a ceremonial ritual to pull it off.
Death should be more than irksome, and the player should view the possibility of his PC’s untimely death with a healthy amount of respect instead of treating his life as an expendable commodity. He should not be in the position of notching his belt for his own deaths as often as he does for his kills, grinning equally at both. The PC’s life should not be cheap, and the player of that PC should treasure it. Thus, in Lorenvale, death can surely happen, but the adventurer has several means to avoid it. If a death does occur, the dead can be brought back, but not without a significant ordeal.
Here are some quick points on how we treat death (and injury) in the Lorenvale campaign:
Help for the PC:
To help a PC avoid death in the first place, we incorporate defense bonuses, additives to the PC’s armor class that increase as he gains levels. Higher bonuses are given to those classes that rely more on their skill to avoid damage and lower bonuses to those who rely on physical armor or magical protections.
A popular variant to death at –10 HP is for the PC to die at his negative Constitution score. Rather than allow this generally for all living things, we have chosen to make this available as a general feat called “Fervent” (from the Mercenaries sourcebook by AEG).
The level drain from death is partially countered by giving a percentile roll to adjust the XP score the PC must fall back to. The base is the halfway mark in XP of the previous level, but he may add back a percentage of the upper half of XP according to this roll. Plus, this DM gives XP for any deeds done while he was alive, and this is tacked on after the PC is raised. Occasionally, this sequence actually brings the PC back to his current level.
Realistic Combat:
Most wounds are completely negated with cure spells. But critical hits almost always deliver lasting scars, nasty marks that magic just doesn’t remove, determined randomly and changing the PC’s appearance. Specific injuries cannot be cured; they must be healed or restored naturally.
We have simple but effective rules for called shots, and a feat that makes this a little easier.
Bludgeoning damage also deals ˝ the amount in non-lethal damage.
Exceptionally large weapons have the potential to knock a PC around (or down), forcing him to move from his position and possibly dealing extra damage from the buffeting.
We re-roll initiative each round.
Returning from the Dead:
Dying is agony to the soul, which is why a level is lost. It is also rough on the body, so we incorporate a “three strikes and you’re out” policy on dying; a PC may be raised twice, but his third death is his last. The feat “Death Becomes Her” grants an additional death each time it is chosen. Other options for gaining extra lives include performing a quest for the deity holding the soul, literally taking the body to the departed soul at its resting place, or the use of a wish spell or miracle.
If death is a painful ordeal, returning to life is not much easier. Thus, only the most upright of clerics, performing a solemn ritualistic ceremony, can free the soul successfully. The gods are rather stingy about releasing their petitioners. And this ceremony is quite expensive.
One oft-overlooked criterion for a successful return from the dead is that the PC must have a patron deity. Without one, the PC’s soul wanders alone on his alignment plane, which no one can decipher without specialized knowledge or high-powered divinations. Once it is determined, though, there still is no deity to grant the soul’s release. It requires the cleric’s own deity sending an avatar to find the soul, barter with the keepers of the plane to give it up, and send it home to its body. This method, while doable, is certainly much more expensive and time-consuming.
This approach should put a healthy fear of the PC dying in the player’s mind without making him afraid to adventure at all. At a minimum, this system should curb those foolhardy players who send their PC headlong into harm’s way with nary a concern for his life. If the PC’s life has value, if it is finite, and if it hurts to lose it, then our hope is that the player will make more of an effort to treasure it, that he will properly consider the risks, and that he will truly cringe when it is snuffed out.
As a side benefit, this system should cause the players to be more selective of their battles, choosing only those that are truly worth dying for, or at least going in better prepared. And by the way, if healing up from a battle were really so easy, and death really not so bad, then everyone would be an adventurer, wars would go on forever, all the bad guys would constantly return to strike again, neat little scars that add flavor to a character would be seen as weird, and the game would lose a powerful dimension.
New Feat:
DEATH BECOMES HER (General)
Death does not have so tight a grip on you.
Prerequisites: none
Benefits: Your soul may withstand returning from the dead one additional time.
Normal: The mystical soul can withstand death only two times. The third death is irrevocable. However, completing a quest for the soul's deity often is enough to convince the god to release it. Also, bringing the preserved body to the soul's resting place on its Outer Plane will reunite soul with body and grant another life (the body must be whole).
Special: This feat may be chosen more than once; multiple selections stack. Each time it is chosen, the PC is able to return from the dead one additional time.
