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Hey hey,
I've been running the Rise of the Runelords AP for awhile now (Jade Regent before that) and I've been really successful in getting my players totally invested in their characters. They love'em but I'm in a GMing quandry regarding the potential of character death that looms large as we advance into the higher levels of play.
Specifically, if a character dies I first, don't want death to have no consequences beyond a monetary penalty (a Raise Dead & a Restoration). On the other hand, I don't want to permanently croak a character either by barring Raise Dead.
I've toyed with a few alternative ideas such as:
1. Using the Skull & Shackles subsystem for losing limbs, so that if you would "die" you instead get maimed. Does anyone have any experience with them?
2. I've heard mention of something called Death Traits or Death Feats in an old 35Private Sanctuary podcast that was posted in Kobold Quarterly a few years ago. Does anyone have experience with those?
Beside those, does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!
Oh, yes....I recall a few Ravenloft 3.0 feats that had the prereq of having to have died once, I think there were others of a similar nature involving energy drain, etc..
I cant point you to the source material now cuz I'm at work, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to look up Ravenloft d20 feats.
I recall a few cool ones were "Jaded" "Back to the Wall" "Haunted"
Maybe there is also something you could steal and modify from the Reincarnated Druid prestige class, but I'm not familiar with that beyond the name.
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I would suggest using things like the negative portions only of the haunted oracle curse (something came back with the character).
Or, an intelligent undead is awakened during the raise dead, and targets npcs, businesses, ect the pc is invested in.
For simple mechanical effects, a movement, dexterity skill, or strength skill check penalty could work as well.
I would suggest having an insanity type penalty - have a listen to the recent Private Sanctuary podcast on madness, they go over several different systems.
Basically, you might have a system where each PC has a set number of sanity points that are depleted as they experience traumatic events, like watching a fellow get dismembered or being raised from the dead, etc. Once these are depleted the PC acquires a randomly rolled insanity from the Game Mastery Guide. Rest and specific story events can help the players regain lost sanity points.
Has the effect of making things like death meaningful and also makes downtime important.
Did some google-fu and found that the Sanity Point system I liked was the one by Kobold Press
A Broken Mind: Sanity and Mental Disorders… for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game by Scott Gable. My impression is that it makes things more interesting without making them overly punishing.
Goal "fun" not "slightly punishing".
Runelords used Barghests. Have one serve Karzoug. Waits in other plane. Attack soul of PC before PC raised.
PC win fight. But each Barghest bite "drains" PC with loss of HP like backwards False Life spell.
Remove Curse heals. But Barghest and Karzoug keep "drained" HP.
Next PC death, repeat. Barghest talk. PCs know each time die Barghest and Karzoug get tougher.
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Adopt the 4th Ed style, make Raise Dead an advanced ritual taking 8 hours and costing 500gp per hit die, remove the penalties other than returning with only 1hp per hit die. Gives a penalty without pushing a player just to make a new character and scales with level.
I use a home brew including this and incorporate 2nd edition style rules on "resurrection survival % rolls" wherein a player must make a % check based on their starting CON score or the character is permanently dead. Each time they are raised, the next roll is made as if the CON were 1 lower. Explains how no one can be raised an indefinite # of times.
One idea I was toying around with for a "you're all already dead!" type game was to essentially give every PC super lowRegeneration, like maybe 1 per hour or 1 per day. If they die they are gone until the regen would bring them back to at least 1 HP, and if the enemy gets to keep their remains they're pretty much screwed unless the party or someone else can rescue them. Not sure how that could work necessarily in RotRL source wise as I'm unfamiliar with the AP.
With that method they still fear death as it means they could miss something important, but at the same time they are never really gone.