Printable View
Hey, all. I wanted a bit of a harsher death penalty in my DnD5e game to make things a bit scarier and more serious for my players. Take a look and let me know what you think and what you'd tweak or change. Thanks so much! http://worldbuilderblog.me/2014/09/1...y-live-thrice/
Have you considered growing penalties?
First spell does a -4 taking 4 days to recover. Second death would still give a -4 but take 8 days to recover. Taking two days for each -1. The third death takes 4 days for each -1 and then 8 and so forth. So four death takes a month to recover.
As for npc death, I suppose the trick would be to have them killed in a missing limb fashion. The Villain claims the head to show his master, or the last awesome blue cuts deeply into his mail shirt removing his arm as the last of his blood drains out.
Maybe even make a limb / organ chart and roll on it with character death, and that first spell has draw backs beyond its time limit.
A final option would be roleplay. The NPC came back, but shocked and worried. He tends to sit and look out the window and seems a shadow of himself. In this set up the PCs can recover in 4 days. The Npc's may sometime never fully recover.