I made a little death save system that fits in a tweet:
This conveys a world where heroes have a lot of luck, but not an infinite amount… each near miss makes you more likely to succumb the next time.
Does this seem fun? Would you give it a try at the table, perhaps in your OSR of choice? Let me know your thoughts!
I like it!
I’m wondering what games you expect/plan it to be used with? I can’t think of many games where you take a near-deathblow seven times and get away with it. Is the dice countdown permanent or does it refresh per battle?
I could also see tying it into the XP system, perhaps your starting death save die is d8 and you can spend resources to raise it, while rolling it drops it.
Oh, I meant for the countdown to be permanent!
I feel like it could be tacked on to various games. Like if you wanted something with more creeping inevitability to sub for the Last Breath move in Dungeon World, or wanted to tack on a death save mechanic to World of Dungeons…
The variation you suggest with XP upgrade options could also be cool. It all just depends on what you want the risk of death to feel like at your gaming table.
Oh, so it could be part of this design experiments series I forgot the name of - but maybe someone will remember, it launched in the last two weeks - consisting only of orphan mechanics that you can use with any system.