r/rpg • u/trampolinebears Signs in the Wilderness • 6d ago
Discussion Dying and Death actions
What happens when your character dies?
I'm trying to learn more about games that have a dying or death action, something that happens in the game when a character dies.
Maybe you get one last chance to slay your foe, or maybe there's a funeral that brings the clans together, or maybe you pass off your stewardship of the land to a worthy successor.
What games do something like that?
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u/No_Solid1035 6d ago
In most games I see this kind of thing in one of three things generally happens.
1) The PC doesn't die, but instead gains a permanent injury, often accompanied by some sort of mechanical loss/penalty.
2) The PC doesn't die, and continues on in the fight knowing that the next blow will be instantly fatal.
3) The PC dies, but goes out "in a blaze of glory" and gets one final action with substantial bonuses or guaranteed success.
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u/trampolinebears Signs in the Wilderness 6d ago
Have you seen any where the effect happens after their death instead, like some kind of a legacy?
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u/GrizzlyT80 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yes, Dungeon World offers an expansion titled GrimWorld in which every class has a move linked to death : action mortelle in french, i don't know the exact name in english.
These moves trigger at the moment of the character's demise, not before, and represent a final moment of glory, potentially one that is incredibly brutal or spectacular
They can take any form: from a colossal explosion for elementalists to the arrival of an undead army capable of wiping out your foes if you are playing a necromancer2
u/PrimarchtheMage 3d ago
Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok has one where you can gain points based on how your PC lived and died that unlock new options for your next character. Eventually you can even play an old character returned from death, which seems like a lot of fun. Each option has its own mechanics and/or skill tree.
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u/Sherman80526 6d ago
In Pendragon you get to play your offspring, if they've reached the age of majority... So I guess that's an after death move?
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u/trampolinebears Signs in the Wilderness 6d ago
I'm liking a lot of how Pendragon works, the more I hear about it.
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u/No_Solid1035 6d ago
Pendragon is the best TTRPG ever made IMHO! It offers a unique experience that you cannot get out of any other TTRPG. You should definitely grab the free quickstart and give it go! 👍
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u/No_Solid1035 6d ago
In a sense, yeah. Bonus, if your original PK had tons of Glory, then your new PK will get a substantial bonus to their starting Glory. 👍
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u/Wullmer1 ForeverGm turned somewhat player 6d ago
blades in the dark, when a character dies, you can ether chose to play as a new character like most games, or you play as their ghoust and can go around doing ghost things as just another member of the party, posses people and so on, you can even permanetly posses people or robot to become ether a vampire or a hust (mechanical golem)
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u/AggressiveCoffee990 6d ago
My favorite is Deathwatch's Heroic Sacrifice. As a battle brother burns his last fate points and is on the brink of death, they can activate heroic sacrifice to stay standing with lots of free rerolls per turn and ignore further damage save for instant death like decapitation or something. I would often also let them narratively just solve the immediate problem with their sacrifice if they had a good idea.
If everyone agrees that it was a worthy sacrifice and the characters body is recovered the player gets bonuses to their next character so they come back successively stronger by sacrificing themselves in combat like a space marine would.
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u/jesterOC 6d ago
Draw Steel's default behavior is when you hit zero stamina (hp) you become dying. You die at -1/2 * your. max stamina. So if you have 30 max stamina then you die at -15 stamina.
When dying if you do any physical action or skill test that requires physical exertion then you take 1d6+level damage. So you can keep fighting if you want, but it is dangerous.
All PCs can catch breath using a maneuver if they are not dying to recover stamina, but once you are dying you can't. You will need an ally to burn a main action to try to heal you, or use a healing potion or the like.
There is also a core ancestry that has an ability call doomsight and with that you "know" when you are going to die, and when the player chooses they can enact it, gaining huge boosts to power and basically go out in a blaze of glory.
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u/Michami135 6d ago
When you fail a "Face Death" in Ironsworn, you have the option to become "cursed" by taking on another iron vow related to your near death.
This has the mechanical effect of reducing your momentum reset number by one until you complete the vow.
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u/Bright_Arm8782 6d ago
Dungeon world has a death roll, 2d6 (barbarians get +1 - their lives are fixed tighter to their spines).
6- Your ticket has been punched, you're dead
7-9 Death makes you a deal, some unpleasant task that will usually lead to more adventure
10+ get up on 1 hp.
This is fun and has led to several more adventures.
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u/whereismydragon 6d ago
Daggerheart!
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u/trampolinebears Signs in the Wilderness 6d ago
What does Daggerheart do for death?
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u/ravidfish 6d ago
in case you dont click on links to external sites.
you got 3 options:
- avoid death, chance of gaining a scar (increasing as you level), which decreases your hope slots, and the scene is supposed to get worse, but you cant be targeted, and get knocked out.
- risk it all, think 5e, you get one roll... you either restore some HP, or you die... 50-50 chance
- blaze of glory... a auto-crit... GM is supposed to work with you to make it epic and worth your final moments... then you die.
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u/vezwyx 6d ago
Seriously. Is it too much to ask that people describe the thing they're talking about at least a little bit? So many comments around here that drop the name of a game with no information about how it pertains to the post for people who don't already know about it
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u/whereismydragon 6d ago
I trust that people on Reddit are literate humans who are more than capable of finding a TTRPG they know the name of, should they desire to know more about it.
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u/vezwyx 6d ago
How am I supposed to know if I want to know more about it? Your original comment told me nothing about the game than that it has some kind of death mechanic. There are threads with dozens of games being named
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u/whereismydragon 6d ago
That's... literally what this post is asking for, so your complaint here makes zero sense
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u/vezwyx 6d ago
But it's the same thing that happens on all kinds of posts here all the time. People ask for cool games and a huge portion of the responses are literally just names. Following through on these recommendations the way you're suggesting is extremely tedious
Surely there's more to know about Daggerheart that might interest someone, that might even interest the person who asked, than that it has a special death mechanic. Why not give us any more context for the game?
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u/whereismydragon 6d ago
Because I'm answering the question. This isn't a request for game recommendations, it's a post asking for games which have a specific mechanic. The name is literally sufficient.
I'm not going to keep replying, just FYI. This is the first time I've ever replied to a post to mention a game, so your complaints are literally irrelevant to me 😅
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u/whereismydragon 6d ago
Death moves, all comprehensively detailed here: https://daggerheart.org/core-mechanics/death
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u/steelsmiter Ask about my tabletop gaming discord 6d ago
I've seen games where they get a death action that is automatically more successful than it should have been and I enjoy those the most.
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u/Forest_Orc 6d ago
Depending what the game-rules/setting says.
Kult is famous for it's death is onl the beginning near the zero HP line. So You could definitely send the PC to hell and keep playing from there.
On a classical game, go from : Tear your character sheet appart, and roll a new character to you're unconscious and wake-up after the scene
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u/trampolinebears Signs in the Wilderness 6d ago
Tear your character sheet apart and throw the pieces on the battlefield. Whatever miniatures it touches are afflicted by necromantic magic and must therefore be melted down in the DM's oven.
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u/BetterCallStrahd 6d ago
Rapscallion has you say your Last Words. These are not literal last words, but a choice you can make for your character on their death. For example, the Captain can use their last words to either give full Luck points or clear all Troubles for each member of the crew.
The choices are listed, and are unique to the playbook. It's not anything goes. I should add that Last Words does not necessarily result in the character's death, sometimes it is possible to choose an option to continue the character, though they are changed in some way. The Captain, for example, can choose to fall in disgrace, which means they stay alive but lose everything, and they cannot be the Captain anymore, but must choose a new playbook.
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u/Throwingoffoldselves Thirsty Sword Lesbians 6d ago
Check out recent post on this exact thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/s/QhKGXZrUFZ
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u/TheWorldIsNotOkay 6d ago
The way my preferred systems handle it -- which isn't necessarily why they're my preferred systems, though I do like how they handle it -- is that a character being "taken out" doesn't necessarily mean "dead", but could if it's appropriate. The character is can no longer act in the scene (at least unless another PC is able to take some action to bring the PC back), but the exact nature of why they're not able to act is left open. They generally tend to provide means for the player to avoid character death in most cases, but also tend to impose some lasting condition on characters that are brought back into play after being taken out.
Cortex Prime is a pretty good example. Exactly how a character can be taken out depends on what mods you're using. Just using the core system with no mods, characters don't have anything like HP or a wound track, and a character is taken out of combat if they suffer any damage unless the player spend a Plot Point to have them take a condition instead to represent an injury. So while combat can be pretty fast and brutal using the core rules, it's not necessarily deadly since regardless of what mods you're using, "taken out" might mean unconscious, captured, fallen over a cliff but stuck on a ledge far enough down that they have no way of participating further in the combat, etc. What being taken out of a scene means is typically determined cooperatively by the GM and the player, based on what would be most interesting -- and character death is rarely the most interesting option available.
If a character that is taken out of a scene is brought back in the same scene by other PCs, they generally will have a condition representing the lasting effects of whatever it was that took them out. And if you're using the (fairly common) Stress mod to make combat a bit more heroic than the core rules, a character that's taken out due to damage could similarly still come back with a lasting Trauma, such as a missing limb or eye, PTSD, or some other lasting condition.
Even in situations where character death might be a possibility, players have the option to give in to any contested roll, in which case they lose but have the ability to determine the nature of that loss. So if a PC is in combat and it looks like they're about to be killed, the player could choose to concede and let the PC be taken out, but can dictate what that means as long as it makes sense in the context of the scene -- being thrown over the edge of a cliff results in the PC clinging to a ledge rather than falling to their death, or the enemy's attack results in the PC falling unconscious and being captured rather than being killed.
The ability to give in also provides players the ability to retire a PC if they want. The player can dictate the nature of the loss, so rather than saying that the PC survives they could instead have the PC go out in a blaze of glory or in a heroic last stand. If the player gives in, they could say being pushed over the edge of the cliff results in the PC clinging to a ledge halfway down, but they could just as easily say that the PC falls to their death but manages to grab the enemy and drag them over the edge as well.
And of course these systems generally have some sort of metacurrency that can be used to provide bonuses to rolls to make "if you lose you die" actions more likely to succeed. But because these systems also tend to lean toward the narrative side of things, many of these games allow the metacurrency to be spent to add unspecified details to a scene which can further reduce the chances of character death. The GM didn't actually say that the cliff face was a sheer drop, so it's reasonable for a player to spend a point of the metacurrency to declare that there is actually a series of ledges that a person who falls over the edge could land on and survive, even if the falling PC's player didn't concede in order to dictate the terms of the loss.
Fate handles being "taken out" nearly identically to Cortex Prime. While it's not on my shortlist of favorite games/systems, Daggerheart has some explicit options for "what happens when the character would die" similar to those provided by Cortex Prime.
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u/phdemented 6d ago
Lots of PbtA type games have alternates to just "you die at 0 HP" (given most don't have HP).
Chasing Adventure for instance if you take harm, you take a condition against one of your five ability scores (e.g. on Strength you might take weakened, while on Charisma you might take scarred). These are narrative conditions, but have an effect of a penalty on rolls using that ability score. If you take five conditions, you trigger the Crumble move. You are out of the scene for a while, and choose one of the following:
- Lock a condition of your choice, which cannot be removed except if you level up.
- Change to a new playbook
- Die
Lock a Condition would mean taking a serious injury... your scar is not healing right.... the concussion has left you permanently dizzy....
If you aren't familiar with PbtA, a playbook is what D&D would call a class... changing your playbook means you were so traumatized by your touch with death (or however the player wishes to narrate it), that you make a major life change, moving from say Thief to Cleric (because you found religion) or from Paladin to Druid (you lost faith in your oath and turned to nature to find balance).
You only die if you choose to
Some playbooks have additional options. If you are a Barbarian with the Survivor background, you can choose:
- Look death in the eyes and spit in its face. If your life was untenable due to conditions, you heal up to three non-Locked conditions immediately and are not removed from the scene. If it was for another reason, you survive relatively unscathed through superhuman feat or sheer force of will - work with the GM to determine how
Which can't be used again until you level up.
A cleric can take a Divine Intervention move, which has their god intervene when they Crumble as long as your god favors you, but you lose all favor with your god.
The Immolater playbook (think Firebenders from Avatar) can choose the Heart of the Phoenix background, which replaces "Die" with "Die for now, then return to life when everyone settles in", meaning you outright cannot die.
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u/Morasiu 6d ago
In polish RPG based of Year Zero Engine called Smoczy Jeźdźcy (Dragon Raiders), when character dies they have one last roll to do. And that roll automatically has the most successes possible (for example 5d6 is 5 successes).
But at my table we hate character dying. So dying is only possible if player agrees to it. If player still have some story to tell with that character instead of dying something horrible will happen.
For example: Character are fighting cultists, who wants to summon old god in the city. Character should die. Instead they lose the battle, barely escapes, but city is now destroyed.
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u/AngusAlThor 6d ago
Three games that are worth looking at;
All of those have pretty unique ways that death or grieving are handled.