House Rule: Death Saving Roll #9

[cartomancer]

The issue of player death has come up a couple of times of late and, i'm sure we all know that lower level characters always run a high chance of being cut down and, even higher level characters can have a bad run of luck. Most of all, i know that although characters are easy to create in TnT, no-one likes losing one.

My suggestion is what i call the Death SR#9, (quite obviously named after Death Spell #9). I've been reading up on the origins of roleplaying games for some time now and, older systems are of particular intrest as history is the best place to learn most things (if we dont remember history, we are doomed to repeat it). On looking through the older stuff fom the other game i noticed that one of the thing that saving rolls used to be made against was 'Death Magic' and i figured that as our system is a lot more flexible, we could go one better and roll against death, period!

We already have a spell that is a case of make a ninth level SR or die so it seems logical to say that when death is absolutely certain and, given the right circumstances, you should be allowed a SR to save your character from the clutches of death, if only for a time. I suggest that against most 'insta deaths' in solos you don't allow the roll because, even if you make it, if you've just been crushed flat by a falling slab and turned into a fine red paste, making the SR wont change the fact that your paste.

Situations where it would be valid would be death in combat, from a slow acting poison (but you'd have to make the roll everytime your CON would drop below zero) and similar... Which brings me on to the mechanic in question.

If your CON would drop to below zero, resulting in death, make a L9SR on Mean (the mean average of all of your attributes). If you make the SR, your CON drops to zero and you may carry on but, a miss means that fate has decided it is your time...

But you can always play through The Abyss. ;D

[sligo]

That's a tough one. When I'm writing solo's, I tend to be rather cruel and harsh, giving players little chance. There are a few places where a bad decision leads to death with no saving roll at all (you turned your back on the enemy, what am I supposed to do?)

However, as a GM in live game-play, I tend to be over-generous when it comes to player death. I don't like to kill off characters without giving them an out. On the other hand, when I set up traps or challenging situations, I never pre-think a way out of it - - I let the players do that. If I pre-think, then I'll inadvertantly lead them to it. So when a character does come face-to-face with death, it's usually due to a string of stupid decisions coupled with missed saving rolls or bad combat rolls. That, or the player is intentionally trying to get the character killed for whatever reason.

[quoghmyre]

I always give a character facing certain death a "Mega Death Saving Roll", this is after they have used every other means to evade death.

The Mega Death Saving Roll is a saving roll on Luck, that requires the throw of a double to achieve. Normally set at the closest Level to their Luck plus 12. If they make the roll some freakish luck has rescued them from Deaths cruel clutches, their CON goes to 1 and they play on, fail then they are truly dead and gone.

[castiglione]

Mar 27, 2010 23:05:01 GMT -5 cartomancer said:

I've been reading up on the origins of roleplaying games for some time now and, older systems are of particular intrest as history is the best place to learn most things (if we dont remember history, we are doomed to repeat it). On looking through the older stuff fom the other game i noticed that one of the thing that saving rolls used to be made against was 'Death Magic' and i figured that as our system is a lot more flexible, we could go one better and roll against death, period!

From what I've gleaned from the older T&T resources (rules, solos), the saving roll back in the early days of T&T was just that. A saving roll, just like in "the other game". SR's were made on LK and that was about it. Which makes sense since, evidently according to the logic of the time, why have your chance of surviving something like being exposed to poison gas, etc. depend on your level when it should depend on how lucky your character is?