A couple months ago, I had a minor revelation about my game, and because these are dark times, this played out on Twitter.
I realized that the game needs difficulty settings, so that each player can play the game at a risk level they are comfortable with. I wrote up those rules in a couple hours. Surprisingly, they came together very quickly, and though I’m sure they’ll change a bit in time, they’ve been good to our playtest so far.
Rather than prattling on (though you know I love to prattle), I’m just going to drop the full text of the difficulty rules right here.
Just like in a video game, different players may be looking for different levels of challenge in the game. When you start play, each player chooses which difficulty setting they’d like to use. It’s totally fine for different players to choose different difficulty levels, and no one should ever feel that they have to play at a higher setting than they are comfortable with.
Players are allowed to change their difficulty setting at any time during play.
Your difficulty setting determines how likely it is for your character to be killed in play (if at all).
Normal Difficulty: You’ll always have a chance to recover.
When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you are knocked out. You’ll wake up once someone takes a moment to give you first aid, or when you heal to above 0 HP. Suffering more damage while at 0 HP or less knocks you out again.
When you are reduced to negative hit points equal to the number of hit dice you have, you are dying. If someone doesn’t give you first aid in the next moment, your character dies. You can’t wake up until healed to above negative hit points equal to your hit dice.
Casual Difficulty: You won’t die on this journey.
When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you are knocked out. Another character can take a moment to give you first aid and wake you up. You’ll be knocked out again if you take more damage.
You can’t have negative hit points. You remain at 0 HP even if you take more damage.
If you’re knocked out and you can’t be saved by one of your allies, you will instead awaken in a nearby settlement some time later. You and the GM will work together to describe who saved you and how.
Your character can’t be killed, no matter what.
Perilous Difficulty: You will probably die on this journey.
When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you are knocked out and dying. You will die if you do not receive first aid in the next moment. If someone takes a moment to give you first aid, you stabilize and wake up, but more damage will knock you out again. If you are healed above 0 HP, you also awaken and recover.
When you are reduced to negative hit points equal to the number of hit dice you have, you die immediately.
As a consolation prize for choosing this high level of difficulty, if your character dies, and you choose to roll up a new character, your new character will start with a bonus of 100 gold coins.
Back to prattling. The most important bit here is that players can change their difficulty at any time. ANY TIME. If Alejandro the Baker fails his save and falls into a pit and takes enough damage to be killed, his player can say, “Actually, Alejandro doesn’t go out like that. I’m switching to Casual difficulty.” This is okay. This is good.
A player shouldn’t have their character die if they’re not cool with it. We all get attached to our characters sometimes. It’s not your job as GM to try to teach people some misguided lesson about loss.
This also removes some burden from the GM. By giving the players some control over their own “danger valve”, you don’t need to worry so much about the dreaded TOTAL PARTY KILL. Design your threats and your battles in whatever way feels reasonable for the scene. Have the monsters attack whoever makes sense (rather than having them lose interest in injured characters so that it doesn’t seem like you’re picking on them). Add places to your world that are filled with awesome treasure but protected by terrible things that the player characters are definitely not ready for. Go nuts. Because your players can always say “Not this time” if a character death would feel cheap.
The only issue I have with the rules at this moment has to do with the “consolation prize” of Perilous difficulty. As written, you could decide to switch your difficulty up to Perilous from normal right when your character is going to die, to get the bonus without the risk. I’ll probably tighten up the rules to prevent this. It’s meant to just soften the loss a little if you chose to play dangerously. It’s not enough to really worry about. It’s not better than playing on Casual, because just not dying is better than a measly 100 gold.
One thing to remember is that when you make a new character, they start with nothing. Level 1 in one class and that’s it, just like at the start of the campaign. That 100 gold puts you a little closer to catching up with the other characters, but it’s not quite enough to even train up to level 2. And while starting back at 1 sounds scary or even unfair, you can drop down to Casual if you’re worried, and if you’re rolling with a group of higher level treasure hunters, you’ll quickly gain enough treasure to train up a few levels. (Also, a generous party could just donate money to a new character for training.)
I will go so far as to say that you should NEVER just give a new character a few free levels to catch up or whatever. This is a game about scarcity of resources. Almost nothing is free. And character death or retirement should matter when it happens, especially because it will never happen without the player’s consent.