Death, Dying and Maiming

Death is a prevailing theme in the Realms of Terror - there are no resurrections, no regenerations, and the only force seemingly capable of creating spontaneous, true life are the Mists of Death themselves. Despite this, there has never been a shortage of those trying to harness these forces beyond the Misty Border - and never a shortage of unfortunate outcomes.

Death in The Domains of Dread

The Domains of Dread is a permadeath server. This means any character that dies - player or otherwise - has lost their natural life even if death does not entail their closure. In almost all cases a dead player character who does not closure may return only as a Dread Figure, and in all cases return is temporary - either they are subject to the limited play period being a Dread Figure provides, or until the conclusion of whatever Game Master sanctioned plot has brought them back after which they will be closured.

Closure is final. There is no-one on staff who will redact a character's closure. Deaths which happen due to eminently provable bugs or other malfeasance may be retconned per the Game Rules. When a character dies and is closured the player account will be awarded an amount of Mist Tokens based on criteria explained in that article.

A closured character's information will be made permanently available to the player in the obituary section on the Forums, after which their character will be retired from their in-game vault.

Dying in The Domains of Dread

Generally, a character dies from lethal damage only during plot relevant conflict between human-controlled entities. In all cases the character will have been notified that pursuing conflict would be lethal prior to taking lethal damage.

When a character reaches 0 HP, they are unconscious and cannot take any action. A hostile human-controlled entity may choose to finish off an unconscious enemy, undertaking a coup de gras action which takes at least 90 seconds IRT to complete, dictated by the supervising Game Master. If they are not finished off they take 1 untyped damage every 60 seconds IRT until they reach -10 HP, after which they will expire if they were rendered unconscious from lethal damage.

Conversely, every 30 seconds IRT the character rolls d100 + Fortitude save +/- CON, trying to beat DC 95. If they succeed at this roll even once, they stabilize, and start to heal 1 HP every 60 seconds IRT until they reach 0 HP, after which they are still down but may attempt to get back up at 1 HP. It is not possible to be set below -5 HP from whatever blow renders a character unconscious. This includes being rendered unconscious due to failing a death save from having deathwatch, though they will be set at -5 HP and suffer a -5 penalty to their death saves.

When a character expires, they produce an itemized corpse. When a character is rendered unconscious, they drop any item or equipment held in their hands. Any character who collapses suffers AC and AB loss until their next rest, beginning at -1 AC and AB and scaling up to -3 AC and AB per collapse.

Maiming and Critical Injuries

Should a character reach -10 HP from nonlethal damage such as from hostile, AI-controlled entities they are fictionally not dead but maimed, entering a comatose state as an itemized body. They may be revived with the sacrifice of some materials and a cast of restoration from another player or capable non-player character once an interregnum period has elapsed, anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes IRT based primarily on level with some randomness. A character who reaches -10 HP from subdual damage or a knockout coup de gras has no such interregnum period and may be revived by placing their itemized body back into the world. Logging out with an itemized body in the inventory will automatically drop them.

The revived character is subject to revival sickness which deals heavy attribute damage that cannot be cured, even with restoration. This sickness will last anywhere from 48 to 168 hours IRT, based on level with some randomness, gradually eroding until the character's attribute values return to normal. Knocked out characters will recover their lost attributes faster.

After the first maiming in a character's life, any future maiming will induce a critical injury. Critical injuries may be temporary or permanent. When a character receives a critical injury, the player is presented with a mandatory choice from three options to apply to the character, selected from a random table. As the character accrues more critical injuries, a greater handicap is applied to the random table, creating the possibility for more severe consequences up to and including death.