On Death and Dying, Redux
There is a post on death and dying on ENWorld today.
It reminds me that we need to have that discussion, fun as usually it is, this weekend. Personally, and y'all are welcome to disagree, because of the way Sphere is structured, there is no resurrection magic per se. At the same time, intelligent enemies (typically) will not kill you intentionally without trying to bind your soul, make you their servant, hold you for ransom, etc. (though the man-eating beetles likely won't be so discriminating)
Here's a random thought, and I wonder what y'all think. In Sphere, karma is very real, and not only the people, but the Sphere itself, has a long memory. Each player, based on their actions in-game, would be awarded karma points, mostly by the other party members, whenever they did something especially cool, heroic, or otherwise important.
Then, if at any point a player dies with a lot of karma points, could convert those karma points to coolness on his rebirth. For example, for 10 karma points, a player could come back as a previously restricted race (Drake, Gryphon, Djinn), for 5 karma points a player could come back with a chosen guild or order and the appropriate template without having to go through the in-game process of joining. Each 2 karma points might equal an extra attribute point, and 3 points might bring you back knowing one of the great secrets of Sphere (I am working on a list of 50 secrets that may be revealed at certain points in the game).
This would do a couple of things...first, let the dice fall where they may, and keep me from having to fudge or even worrying about whether fudging is important. Second, encourage good role-playing to earn karma. Third, remove some, even if not all, of the stress of losing a cool character. I won't reveal all now, but even death in Sphere is vitally important and your characters memories may outlive you. More on this Saturday, as I think I've come up with a way narratively to make it important for the party to work together (including bringing in new characters after one has died) instead of the usually forced method we normally have to rely on.
Of course, it would have to have some caveats. The method of a character's death might give a positive or negative karma bonus. Intentional death would automatically erase all karma; stupid death (Hey, I wonder if spider-climbing into the wyvern's lair is a good idea...) might be -5 karma, while non-intentional and heroic would be worth a bonus.
Just some thoughts!