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Injury instead of Death

In some game you want to build a character and run all the way from beginning to end to see all the levels, gather all the experience and loot, and have an epic tale for the ages. In these games, consider dispensing with death rules and instead substituting injuries.

Wait, what?! You can't do that. There is no reward without risk. What will make the players afraid if their characters can't die? That isn't very old school of you. Is this a more millenial PC way of gaming?! What, are you afraid of making your players cry?

Yeah, I have heard all the arguments. The bottom line is that the game is about what the players and GM make it about. Don't force your way of thinking on someone else's game. Death rules, like any other rules, can be changed if so desired. Everyone gets to play their own game.

There is a valid point in the criticism -- there has to be some consequence to making choices. If dying isn't it, what do we use instead?  Of course, we could use the plot to generate negatives, but let's stick with something a bit more mechanical. My suggestion is that we instead substitute injuries. Injuries are long term penalties to a character. Some might be permanent. Some might just take a long time to heal. All injuries occur when "death" criteria are met for your game. Your "death" criteria are entirely up to you and your group. For 5E, you could stick with normal death saving rules, or you could just rule it that death is when you hit zero hit points. To each his own.

For an injury, it has to hit you where it counts. Making a dumb-as-a-rock barbarian dumber doesn't do anything. The injury should apply to a character feature or strength. Let me throw out some examples using 5E:

  • -2 to your highest ability score
  • Disadvantage on your highest skill
  • Loss of an arm (no two-handed or dual wielding) for a melee character
  • Leg injury (half speed) for a character with speed greater than 30 feet
  • Disadvantage on checks to maintain concentration for casters
  • Disadvantage on attacks at over 30 feet for a ranged character
  • Blindness
  • Reduced healing (half healing)
  • Vulnerability to a common damage type (all slashing, bludgeoning, piercing, etc)
A GM could generate a table for a roll after to death to determine the injury based on the character type.  Injuries could heal after several levels (maybe 4 in 5E) or be permanent. In systems with points gained at levels, these could be spent to heal the injuries. Multiple injuries could stack, and perhaps, even after a fixed number of active injuries, the character could still die. This would take a certain kind of group to play out well, but it may be a good alternative to death.

Why is this better? In some games, you want to bring a character all the way through. In these cases, giving that character a serious weakness to overcome takes the place of the death penalty. By converting death, which is wholly uninteresting to the story in many cases, to a weakness, we augment the story with a new aspect. The story becomes better instead of being cut short.



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