Death and dying. It is very easy to get killed in The Fantasy Trip. Many different people have put their house rules on the Internet–especially their rules for handling dying in TFT. Here are mine.
In the cannon rules, a character reduced to 0 ST is dead, plain and simple. You have to revive the dead character within an hour, or they are gone… Now, many folks did not like that way of handling death, so they came up with their own variants.
In GURPS, the figure is unconscious between 0 ST and -ST (for example, if a figure’s ST is 10, he is unconscious between 0 and -10). The figure is on their "last legs" and can still be revived with a physicker’s aid and a saving roll. Other house rules have variations of this theme, including losing 1 ST every turn until the character fails his saving roll.
My house rules have our own variation: Unconscious between 0 and -ST, with a character being forced to roll 3 dice against base ST or die as soon as they go below 0. After that, the character must receive aid from a physicker within 2d turns. If the physicker makes a roll of 3d/IQ roll, the victim is stabilized. If he fails, the victim dies–unless another physicker tries.
If the victim receives no more damage, he is considered to be at ST 0 and unconscious. His friends must carry him out of combat to a safe area. He can then be healed normally, but still loses the normal 5 attribute points.
The point of these house rules is to give players a last chance, but keep things simple. It also adds a bit of drama for the surviving party as they try to save him.
What do you think? Any better way of handling death, or just stick with the basic rules?
Marko ∞
(Originally published on inthelabyrinth.org, on 3/20/2015. A lot of this is OBE now, with TFT being published again and all.)
