Death Mechanics

>>54891665
>What sort of ways would there be to achieve this without it just being better to let the character die and start fresh?

One way I've seen to handle near-death experiences and the ensuing lasting injuries is that it's entirely optional. Some systems make it such that players can voluntarily take a crippling injury to avoid their character outright dying from an otherwise lethal attack. In this case the player is actively choosing whether they want to roll up somebody new, or if they like their current character enough to touch out a lost limb or some such. As it's all player choice, you sidestep the issue of players feeling like the GM has unfairly crippled their character, and gives them the direct option to forego living with the injury.

Alternatively, you could make all lasting injuries also have some permanent upside, so that they roughly canceled. IE "Sure the bear got my leg, but nobody messes with me now that they know I wrestled a bear and won". The injury hurts, but you get some flavorful buff from the encounter as well. You can then imagine the grizzled badasses walking around missing eyes and limbs, covered in scars, and imagine the shit they went through to get those scars, and thus how terrifying they must be.

I actually think I don't have consequences enough for this sort of thing. I understand fantasy, magic, etc, but if you get your arm blown off with a fireball, or a guy puts a bullet in your head, healing spells aren't going to restore your stock.

>>54892912
shock* mb mb

>>54891665
Dogs in the Vineyard has the fallout system, where conflict changes the characters' traits, relationships or stats. Doesn't directly relate to death mechanics (other than it being the result of too much fallout) although saving someone from death is itself a conflict which can have fallout for both the hurt person and the one doing the healing.

>>54892912
A lot of this comes down to how serious you want risks to be. D&D introduces life-saving healing magic from the get-go with CLW, dismemberments can be fixed with Regeneration, and then there's Raise Dead. This all means no real time is spent dealing with injuries and that getting stabbed is just par for the course. Even the few times sanity mechanics come up, Restoration tends to fix them.

The idea of a world with ready access to physical but not mental healing is an interesting one, especially if you include something about feeling less and less human the more times you're eviscerated and put back together.

>>54893132
>dismemberments can be fixed with Regeneration
It's all fun and games until the rogue wakes you the fuck up because your new fucking arm had been choking you while you slept...

>>54893132
I'd like to think after a few regenerations it wouldn't be an issue, or a few resurrections (like literally being in ghost mode/ respawn cam in an fps) and it wouldn't be a big deal unless you actually got killed in a massively fucked up way.

However, dying is still dying. Death is feared for a reason. And watching your skeletal structure come back together and muscle wrap over it doesn't sound like something a 17 year old day 1 adventurer would be keen on seeing, let alone feeling.

>>54893314
Part of what I meant was the trauma of injury and death, but the more important aspect IMO is the new disconnect between that pain and horror and any lasting consequence. You can literally be beaten to death and wind up fine the next day. How does that change how you perceive violence, pain and death? How do you change after you've died dozens of times? Can you still understand why non-adventurers are so scared of death, shy away from injuries? Cue some adventurers going nuts, killing people at the drop of a hat because "they can just come back". Hell, a broken arm can be fixed with Cute spells, which are pretty ubiquitous in most D&D-esque settings. "Getting physical" in a fight gets way scarier when both individuals don't need to hold back for fear of really injuring the other.

>>54893677
OOOOOOOo.

That makes a ton of sense. I'm glad I got to hear what you had to say on this. I never really thought of the fact that warriors with a cleric handy are basically religion(less) zealots with no fear of injury.

>>54893777
It is an interesting theme which is not often explored in these games. An anime based on people being trapped in an MMO world, Log Horizon, features a guild who believes they catch glimpses of the outside when they die, and so fanatically throw themselves into combat with the intent to die over and over again, as they just respawn. The non-adventurers are terrified.

>>54891665
the most interesting as of late that I've heard of is called "Death Boxes"
The First time a PC goes down, they're down for a few rounds, but recover with no negative effects (If they're attended to by another player)
The second time, they receive a permanent injury or mortal wound
The third time, the PC is totally dead, but they get a last ditch action, which could lead to some pretty ROC stuff.

>>54891665
Like others said in the thread, you godda see what you want first and aim for it. There's D&D where limbs regrow and HP gets healed (ingroup joke is that a cure-light-wounds wand is a soldering iron that solders flesh back together), the other side of the coin could be Warhammer RP 2ed where characters can lose limbs, eyes, and so on.

Depends on what you want, and how the players want it; you godda meet each other at the middle. If your guys are gamers or greek-god-geeks that can't have a character that has scars or suffer disabilities from combat, you should go with the regular D&D.
If they're up for some realism, 3weeks to heal a stiched cut with a chance of infection, go with that.

I personally make the 0HP character roll 1d6; on a 1 they're instantly dead, any other roll gives them 10 minutes of bleeding out semi-consciously. They can do an action and die in this state, such as drawing all the pins on all their bombs or last-standing with a heavy machinegun.
Anyone applying first aid returns them to 1HP (or more).
I don't do mechanical debilitating statuses on characters that were wounded, I just hand out cool scars of the wound (write it down on the character sheet).