Variant Status: Crippled

[No brains]

Dying sucks.

Dying stops you from playing, penalizes your team, and is all too often unavoidable.

I have an idea to 'soften dying' with a replacement condition I call Crippled.

When a character reaches -10 hp, they do not die but are instead Crippled. When Crippled, a character can be healed back to consciousness, but they can only be healed up to 0 hp, and are continually Disabled.

I see several advantages to this status over straight death:

- Closer to reality. In our world, plenty of people get grievously injured to the degree they cannot recover to what they were before the injury.

- Closer to 'plausible fantasy'. Even in legends, returning from real death is a major miracle, but healing the sick and blind are more 'mortal miracles' that keep heroes further away from being god-like entities.

- Keeps players playing. Normally a dead player can't help the party, and some DMs even refuse to let dead players contribute advice to their living comrades. The crippled condition is still grievous enough to keep players from taking stupid risks as it slows down the game, but players who are smart but just unlucky can still aid their teammates without metagaming.

Obviously though, the idea still needs work. Some might think Crippled is too harsh a word for the condition, and real death becomes more difficult to define. If you have any ideas that can help, please contribute. For the issue of real death, perhaps no character can die unless hit with a coup de grace, and being conscious but Crippled still leaves you vulnerable to such an attack.

So, tell me what you think.:smallsmile:

P.S. I got a headache shortly after beginning this so please excuse any crappy syntax, grammar, or general incoherence.:smallfrown:

[MesiDoomstalker]

True death should come at -(10+Con) score in this system I think. Of course you have to have a way to fix Crippled and shouldn't be avaible readily in combat. Raise Dead is a 5th level spell and thus unavaible until 9th level. I'd say that Cripple-cure should be avaible at 4th even at 3rd. Of course it be Cleric Spell and be 1 minute casting time. Touch range. Conjuration (Healing). Of course, Heal and possibly Regenerate would rid the target of Crippled but those are higher than Raise Dead.

Personally, I don't think having 0 as their max HP and being constantly disabled is right. Its almost a mockery of being alive. You still can't contribute to combat much of anything and then constantly lapse unconcious thus drawing the Healbot away from combat to heal your sorry butt. I'd say max HP=HD and your constantly disabled. That way if combat comes, you'll be extremly fragile but can at least high tail it out of there before lapsing into unconciousness. Possibly with a Con penalty as well to simulate weaker state. Your Fort save will decrease as would your "your really dead" point. The penalty can't be removed until Crippled is removed.

Just some ideas.

[Varil]

I don't really see an advantage for this. Being sidelined as a basically useless character who can talk isn't really any less boring than being relegated to complete bystander. At least as a bystander you can focus on character creation if you're going to have to swap out your character.

I mean, if it works for you, great, but I actually think 3.X is too *gentle* with death, rather than the opposite.

Edited for harshness. I'm sleepy and irritable.