Death, Dying and Maiming

Death and the finality thereof is a prevailing theme in the Realms of Terror where compared to the Prime Material—here there are no resurrections, no regenerations, and the only forces capable of creating spontaneous, true life are the Mists of Death themselves. Yet in spite of these facts there has never been a shortage for the brazen many who seek, futilely, to harness those forces beyond the Misty Border—and never a shortage for outcomes unfortunate and unforeseen.

Death in The Domains of Dread

The Domains of Dread is a permadeath server. This means any character who dies—player or non-player—will have lost their natural life even if death does not entail their immediate closure. Time-limited return in this way means becoming a Dread Figure or being part of a larger Game Master chaperoned event but, regardless, such characters are limited to the play period being a Dread Figure imposes or until the event’s conclusion after which they will be closured and removed from play.

Closure is final. No Game Master will redact a character’s lawful closure. Deaths which are determined to have happened due to malfeasance, bugs and/or unintended behavior may be redacted per the Game Rules. When a character is closured the player account may be awarded with an amount of Mist Tokens.

Information about a closured character will be made available to the player in the obituaries section on the Forums, after which the character is retired from their server vault.

Dying

Characters in The Domains of Dread die as a result of lethal damage suffered from hostile engagements with human-controlled entities, per the Character versus Character Rules. Likewise it is required that a character be informed that pursuing conflict would necessitate lethal damage prior to taking lethal damage. AI-controlled entities do not use lethal damage and will not seek to finish characters off after they have been downed.

A character who reaches 0 HP or lower is downed and cannot take any action, being fictionally unconscious. Human-controlled hostile entities may select their body with the !fd chat command to initiate a coup de gras action taking 90 seconds IRT to complete after which the downed character will be killed. Any hostile spell, spell-like ability or damage interrupts the coup de gras.

A downed character who is not killed outright takes 1 untyped damage every turn IGT until they reach -10 HP, after which they will expire if they were downed from lethal damage.

Every 30 seconds IRT the downed character rolls d100 + Fortitude save +/- CON, trying to beat DC 95. Should they succeed once they stabilize, now healing 1 HP every turn IGT until reaching 0 HP, after which they will be still downed but may choose to get back on their feet at 1 HP.

It is not possible to be set below -5 HP from whatever damage downed a character. This includes being downed from falling a death save from deathwatch, but they will be set to -5 HP and suffer a -5 penalty to stabilize. Intervention from recovery items such as bandages or sutures may immediately stabilize a downed character, subject to a successful Handle Medicine check from the administering character. Healing spells must heal the character to 0 HP in order to stabilize. They will not recover HP past 0 from healing spells until they are back on their feet.

When a character expires, they produce an itemized corpse. When a character is downed, they drop any held item or equipment to the ground. Any character who is downed suffers -1 AC and AB until their next successful rest, scaling up to -3 AC and AB per down.

Maiming and Critical Injuries

A character who reaches -10 HP as a result of nonlethal damage 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 character or capable non-player character after an interregnum period, anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes IRT based on level with some random fuzzing. The interregnum period or restoration requirement do not apply if they were rendered unconscious from subdual damage or a knockout coup de gras, awakening if their body is dropped on the ground or after 15 minutes IRT. Logging out with an itemized body in the inventory drops them, awakening them on the spot.

Characters who are restored are subject to revival sickness, dealing heavy attribute damage that cannot be cursed, even with restoration. The sickness persists anywhere from 48 to 168 hours IRT, based on level with some random fuzzing. As the sickness nears expiry the attribute damage will soften until fully restored to normal. Knocked out characters recover lost attributes faster.

After a character is maimed for the first time, any future maiming induces critical injuries. Critical injuries may be temporary or permanent. When a character receives a critical injury, the player will be presented with a choice between three options to apply to the character, selected by the Game Masters from a random table. As the character accrues more of these critical injuries, a greater handicap is applied to the random table, opening the possibility for more severe consequences up to and including death.