Dark Souls Mechanic

>>53586654
>(please don't turn this into which edition is better)
then why the fuck did you include the edition you were playing?
for the record i wholeheartedly think fourth edition is the best D&D

>>53586654
You should clarify the mechanics of the dark sign, so people know what you're talking about exactly.

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>>53586654
>What should trigger the players getting it?
The games never specify how people get it. Some places it's implied it's something you're born with, other places make it seem like a literal brand that can be put on someone, and it's even possible that both or neither of those are true. It's a big unanswered question so you can do whatever you want. Do you have an equivalent to bonfires as well where players with the darksign would respawn? If so just have the first character that dies disintegrate and show up at the last one they were at.
>How to implement the effects of hollowing onto the PC?
This is harder because you have three (or four if you wanna count soul vs. body form in DeS) mechanics to choose from, as well as the loss of mental function that was never implemented mechanically. So specify what game you want hollowing to be most like and this'll be easier to answer.

>>53586781
OP asked how to incorporate certain new mechanics into his game. One would need to know the system to better tailor said mechanics.

And 4e sucks btw.

>>53587297
solaire's undead. why would he be breathing?

... nostalgia?

>>53589998
It may be a sigh

>>53589998
He's undead in basically name. He still looks and acts fully human. He could just be breathing because it's what human brains are hard-wired to do and we need no conscious input to do it.

>>53586654
You forgot the most important question:
Why?

Hollowing should focus the character's resolve past reason. the only thing keeping them from turning into a mindless zombie is their desire to achieve a goal. If they lose their will to go on, or achieve the goal and don't have a new one, they hollow out and attack anything in sight, no going back.
The trick is to pick something that is approachable but never attainable.

Also I like some of the weapons. Firelink Greatsword, any iteration of From's Moonlight

I just make sure a character dies every session. Has a similar effect.

>>53586654
Whenever you die and return to life via the darksign, make an easy will save. If you pass, you come back as near-hollow and can keep playing. If you fail, you're totally hollow and are basically permadead.

I don't think near-hollowing would affect stats meaningfully. Dark souls undead, unlike their dnd counterparts, are still vulnerable to stuff like poison and about as strong as humans.

Also free health potion refills on respawn.

>>53593460
To make rerolling easy, I'd make the system super simple, since someone who is used to playing a video game may not have the patience for ALL THESE STATS
>body
>mind
>soul
And maybe a poise stat

>>53593460
make it so you get an increasing penalty to the will save the more you die

>>53586801
The Dark Sign is a brand that no one reslly knows the origin of, but everyone knows it appears on a person when they are cursed with undeath. Those marked with the Dark Sign are cursed to never truly die, and ressurect a short time after being "killed". Their souls are bound to their bodies, I suppose. The pain, suffering, and hopelessness of dying over and over gradually erodes the minds of the undead to the point that their bodies wither and they lose all semblance of sanity, a process refered to as Hollowing or going Hollow. An undead can stave off Hollowing by consuming Humanity, basically a fragment of a primordial soul that exists in all humans. Undead are also linked to the bonfires, special fires fueled by the bones of undead from ages past. They resurrect at the last bonfire they sat beside, used as a checkpoint mechanic in Dark Souls with lore explanations for how some of it works.

>>53593805
And occasionally the party must face their Hollowed former comrades as they lurch out of the darkness, growling and laughing and muttering nonsense, swinging their weapons with animalistic fury...

>>53589998
As far as I can tell the functional meaning of undead in Dark Souls is just "unable to die" rather than "biologically inert and yet still moving." They can probably drown and suffocate, they just won't stay dead.

>>53593805
>increasing penalty to the will save the more you die

Idk, dark souls PCs should be able to die a lot without an increasing sense of urgency. Even if they pass on a 2, that only gives PCs an average of 20 lives.

Part of me wants to try a "will to live" value that decreases with deaths (a particularly infuriating death might drop it by 2), but is replenished when the PCs accomplish something, make friends, demonstrate great determination, or amuse the GM.

>>53594046
Most likely true, since they still bleed, take damage from poison, and cry out in pain when injured.

>>53594488
Might be a good place for a humanity mechanic. Instead of them losing all of it on death they have an option to burn one to skip the roll. Also let it be used for rerolls or the like during normal play. Offer it as rewards for achieving goals and good roleplay, but also allow it to be stolen by and from NPCs.

>>53594046
>They can probably drown and suffocate, they just won't stay dead.
>die underwater
>suffocate
>respawn
>suffocate again
>repeat until hollow

fuck

You know, a lot of /tg/ is super anti "gamist" things but I think a campaign where death is not only super cheap, but you are expected to die a few times before completing a dungeon sounds pretty interesting.

Trial and error dungeon crawling would normally be un-fun but when death is cheap, and you just come back, it could be interesting.

>>53595817
Respawn, not resurrect.
They respawn at the last bonfire.

>>53595995
oh good, that makes it less horrifying

>>53596026
Unless the last bonfire is now underwater.

>>53596436
That's basically new londo.
No more fire, and swallowed by the untold darkness of the abyss. And probably life-eaten by Darkwraiths or something.

>>53586654
>Has anyone ever tried to run or integrate any mechanics from Dark Souls?
Stop.
>I'm running a game in D&D 3.5
Seriously, stop.

>>53597272
>No fun allowed

>>53597288
>dark souls on tabletop
>3.5
>fun
What could make you think this?

>>53597315
I didn't say it was my version of fun, but some people get off to the feeling of being castrated, so I'm not going to judge someone for wanting to do something stupid with a game of DnD.

>>53597272
Did you even read the thread, faggot? Some fun ideas were shared.

>>53597357
Have another one: don't play 3.5.

>>53597403
That's not a fun idea. 3.5 can still be enjoyed ironically, so not playing it is not more fun but just less potentially un-fun.
A fun idea would be to play Fantasy Craft instead.

>>53593918
Nitpick: the Light Soul fragmented for Gwyn to give souls to others, but the Dark Soul actually just copy-pastes. No diminishing, which is why Gwyn is super afraid of the Age of Dark - infinite growth

>>53594506
They clear don't feel as much pain as they should. Have you heard the PC pain noise? Sounds like he just found out he had a late fee at the library

>>53597627
Well how many times have you died? You get used to pain after a while.

The brand isn't something the palyer can control. They get it or they don't. it has no mechanical reflection either. Each time the character dies, decrease the quality of the descriptions you give them. Descriptions of NPCs begin to slip in quality until a friendly NPC could well be described as a threat. Their slick smile starts to reveal black teeth and their sword becomes half drawn at all times. Is any of this true? probably. The important thing, that so many people misunderstand, is that in the Souls games, mechanics enforce the themes of the world and its story. You shouldn't try to run an RPG and just use Souls combat and mechanics without a story to frame and contextualise those mechanics.

What about retrieval?

>>53597704
There's a lot of GM overhead with your system for hollowing, the party isn't that likely to die in proportional amounts requiring you to give many contradictory descriptions.

>>53586781
I disagree with your opinion but respect that that is the edition you have the most fun with.
You faggot

>>53598294
There is yes, which is why I wouldn't implement the 'system' in a game that wasn't built to enhance it. Hollowing in Souls is where Undead lose purpose and their 'will to live' as it were. If OP wants to have that in his game without it being lethal or thematically appropriate then he really needs to question why he wants to run games with Souls mechanics when Souls mechanics are very tightly tied to the games themes and stories.

>>53594046
Considering that undead can still be poisoned, I'm inclined to believe it's more on the "unable to die" side of things.

>>53586654
pyramid magazine for GURPS came out with 'havens and hells' (in alternate dungeons 2, issue 3/89) a fair while back (march 2016), and it's worth having a look at
it concerns a world where the gods have basically turned all of creation into one big colosseum/ant farm where they pit human civilisation against demons, in a hellscape dotted with bubbles of life where humans can safely dwell and demons cannot enter
within these 'havens' you can only die by your own hand or natural causes, and are very safe
meanwhile, if you die in the outside world you respawn naked within the nearest haven, losing everything you were carrying and also a small amount of life force (represented by losing advantages and gaining disadvantages, starting with a free 'extra life' advantage or two for your first deaths and then moving onto your actual point value)

the big challenge is that havens can't support anything more than a hamlet on their own, and don't have any good quality materials or magic, so you routinely have to send adventurers out to gather resources and maintain connections with other havens.
monsters also respawn, and can gain power by hunting humans and taking their life force and equipment, so their ultimate goal is to grow strong enough to destroy the havens, whereas the humans' goal is to expand the havens and reclaim the world outside for good.

overall it's the best translation of dark souls' mechanics into an RPG setting i've seen so far, and the magazine has some really interesting and relatively system-agnostic suggestions on how to run it.
hopefully that'll give you some ideas, and hopefully you can adapt the mechanical bits.