Adventuring Gear + Alchemy Items

YOU CAN SKIP OVER THE ADVENTURING GEAR SECTION BECAUSE IT'S BORING BUT HERE ARE THE GOOD PARTS: Salt damages oozes and can be used to preserve meat.  Lots of thing can be animated by necromancer PCs because they're mostly animal products: grease, ink, oil, etc.  High quality mirrors are as rare as minor magic items.  Go read the Alchemical Items section, those are a lot more interesting.

If you're reading this on your phone the tables probably won't render well, but that's fine, just skip to the bottom and read this post backwards, staring with the interesting alchemy bits.

So here is part of that list.  It just includes Adventuring Gear and Alchemical Items.  I'll do the other stuff (Hirelings, Weapons, Armor, Lodging, Investments, Services, Animals) later.

by Viktor Titov

How to Read This

Short Name is the quick, efficient way to refer to an item.

Full Name is the more interesting way to refer to an item.  It's how NPCs in the game will refer to the item, if the DM is really into it and y'all are talking to someone that speaks adventurer.  Some of these might just be adventurer slang, really.  If there are different types, they will all be listed.  (e.g. Woskum and Brusky are both types of liquor.)

Cost is in gold coins, for most systems.  Whatever the unit is that gives 1 xp.

Inventory Slots is how much space they take to carry.  Most people can carry a number of items equal to their Str+5.

Availability is how hard it is to find these items.  If you see 'City', you know you can probably find it in a major city.  'Town' means that you can probably find it in a town.  If you see neither, that means that it's probably not available on any open market.

ADVENTURING GEAR
Short Name	Full Name	Cost	Inventory Slot	Availability
Liquor, flask (3 doses)	Woskum Brusky Horlick Scumbo Snakey	10	1	City
Blanket	Blanket	5	1	City	Town
Bottle, glass	Bottle, glass	5	1	City
Caltrops, bag	Dragon's teeth, bag Tribulations, bag	5	1	City	Town
Clothing, common	Scrappers	10	-	City	Town
Clothing, noble	Wagonscrews	100	-	City
Crowbar	Jimmy pig Iron crow	5	1	City	Town
Chalk	Gypsy stick	1	-	City	Town
Garlic, bulb	Stinking rose	1		City	Town
Grapple + 20' Rope	Grapnel	10	1	City	Town
Grease, sack	Tallow, sack	1	1	City	Town
Holy symbol, wood	Nine eyes, glove	5	1	City	Town
Holy symbol, silver	Nine eyes, glove, silvered	50	1	City
Holy water, vial	Holy water, vial	25	1/3	City
Ink, vial	Atrament, vial	5	1/3	City
Lantern, hooded	Lantern, hooded	10	1	City
Lantern, bullseye	Lantern, bullseye	20	1	City
Lockpick, Set	Rat fingers	10	1	City
Mirror, copper	Mirror, copper	10	1	City
Mirror, glass	Looking-class	200	1	City
Oil, flask	Leviathan oil, flask	20	1	City
Pole, 10'	Dungeon stick	1	1	City	Town
Ration	Salted fish Offa Dried Gosca Jo Bread Hard tack Stone cheese	1	1/3	City	Town
Rope, hemp, 50'	Rope, hemp, 50'	10	1	City	Town
Rope, silk, 50'	Rope, silk, 100'	200	1	City
Salt, bag	Salt, bag	10	1	City
Shovel	Dungeon spoon	10	2	City	Town
Soap	Soap	2	1	City
Spellbook, blank	Spellbook, blank	100	1	City
Spike, iron	Spike, iron	1	1/3	City	Town
Stake, wooden	Stake, iron	1	1	City	Town
Flint and Tinder	Tinderbox	5	-	City	Town
Torch	Torch	1	1	City	Town
Waterskin	Waterskin	1	1	City	Town
ALCHEMICAL ITEMS
Acid, vial	Aqua regia, vial	50	1/3	City
Antidote, greater	Carbuncle	300	1/3
Antidote, lesser	Bezoar	100	1/3	City
Antiplague, vial	Rosewater, vial	50	1/3	City
Black sugar, packet	Black sugar, packet	300	1/3
Bomb	Goblin bomb	100	1
Bomb, stink	Sulfur bomb	300	1	City
Brain jelly	Brain jelly	500	1
Cigarette, pack	Cigarette, pack	10	1/3	City
Cave stench, vial	Cave stench, vial	100	1/3	City
Crystiletto	Charcorran dagger	100	1
Dehydrated water, ampule	Dehydrated water, ampule	300	1/3
Dust of dryness, pouch	Dust of dryness, pouch	300	1/3
Elixir of Youth, vial	Azoth, vial	1000	1/3
Fairy dust, pouch	Fairy dust, pouch	100	1/3
Fireworks	Fireworks	50	1
Gas, blinding	Beggarmaker, powder	300	1
Gas, rage	Fumes of hell, vial	300	1
Gas, sleep	Olobia, powder	500	1
Gas mask	Gas mask	30	1
Green slime, vial	Green slime, vial	300	1/3
Ingested poison, bitter	Nightshade, powder	10	1/3	City
Ingested poison, subtle	Orpiment, gem	100	1/3
Ingested poison, deadly	King of poisons, powder	500	1/3
Insect repellant, vial	Bog myrtle, vial	10	1/3	City
Jeklogen, vial	Jeklogen, vial	300	1/3
Liquid light, ampule	Liquid light, ampule	50	1/3	City
Midnight wind, ampule	Midnight wind, ampule	100	1/3
Mithridatium, vial	Mithridatium, vial	500	1/3
Mondmilch, vial	Mondmilch, vial	100	1/3
Mutagen, vial	Mutagen, vial	100	1/3
Obliviax, packet	Obliviax, packet	300	1/3
Ooze, vial	Ooze, bottled	300	1/3
Philosopher's stone	Philosopher's stone	???	1/3
Philosopher's frost, crystal	Philosopher's frost, crystal	300	1/3
Poisoned arrow, sleep	Olobia paste, arrow	50	1/3	City
Poisoned arrow, slow	Black hellbore, arrow	10	1/3	City
Poisoned arrow, weak	Viper venom, arrow	100	1/3	City
Poison arrow	Red devil frog slime, arrow	200	1/3
Rust powder, pouch	Rust powder, pouch	500	1/3
Shrieker sprout	Shrieker sprout	50	1
Smoke bomb	Smoke bomb	50	1
Sovereign glue, vial	Sovereign glue, vial	500	1/3
Spiders, bag	Spiders, bag	20	1/3
Stim jelly	Talakeshi jelly	100	1	City
Truth serum, vial	Truth serum, vial	100	1/3	City
Alicorn, powder, pouch	Alicorn, powder, pouch	500	1/3
Universal solvent, vial	Alkahest, vial	500	1/3
Unwater, skin	Unwater, skin	50	1

Adventuring Gear

Liquor, Flask

Just a bunch of booze.  Can be thrown like a flask of oil, except for half as long.  Good for rousing people and making friends.  If you drink it, you get drunk.

<sidebar> Rules for getting drunk: your critical failure range increases by 1 for every point of Drunk. </sidebar>

Bottle, Glass

Glass bottles are entirely anachronistic in a psuedomedieval setting!  But they're more interesting than goat bladders, because they break.

<sidebar>Rules for breakage: glass bottles and vials each have a 50% chance of breaking when you take fall damage.  Roll for each item separately.<sidebar>

Caltrops, Bag

If you're distracted (by a chase, for example), you need to succeed on a Wis check to notice caltrops.  You can spend a round walking through them safely or attempt to jump/dodge them with a Movement check.  Running through them unawares will automatically fuck up your feet.  Fucked up feet cause you to move at half speed for the rest of the day.

Crowbar

Turns most doors from a question to "can we open this door?" to "how long will it take us to open this door?"

Grease, Sack

Dex check to avoid slipping, losing grip.  Also can give you a bonus to squeeze through stuff, or escape grapples.  Made from living stuff, so it can be affected by any necromancy that can affect cows (or sheep, in some places).

Holy Symbol (Glove Embossed with The Nine Eyes Against Chaos)

Used by clerics.  A leather glove with nine eyes in the palm, embossed and painted.

Holy Water

2d6 damage to undead.  If drank, has a 2-in-6 chance to cure a curse.  The only fuel that holy fire can use is holy fire.

Ink, vial (Atrament)

Atrament is made from burnt ivory (at least in this setting).  Because it was once part of a living creature, it can be affected by any necromancy that can affect stags (or elephants, in some places).

Lanterns

Hooded: 30' radius.  Bullseye: 60' cone.  If a bullseye lantern is your only light source, combat is difficult (-2 to hit).  If dropped or thrown, they spill.

Lockpicks

Break on a critical failure.  Critical success means you can do all sorts of shit with the lock: extract it, trap it, rekey it, etc.

Mirror, Copper

Good for seeing around corners, and entirely anachronistic.  Don't worry about it.  But if you want to use a mirror to petrify a medusa, you'll need a higher quality mirror than this little dinky shit.

Mirror, Glass

Yes, you can petrify a medusa with this one.  Not available in stores, since the means to its manufacture have been lost.  Ask the king if he has one, or the elves.

Oil, Flask

In a lantern, burns for 2 hours.  As a molotov cocktail, burns for 1d4 damage, 4 rounds, 5' diameter puddle.  Alternatively, a line of fire across a 10' hallway.  Jumping over fire requires a Movement check, and in the case of animals and goblins, a Morale check.

Oil is made from leviathans (sea monsters, basically).  Reduce the price by 50% if you are in a seaside town.

Rations

Try to keep track of what rations are made from--meats are potentially necromantically active.  (And yes, a bunch of reanimated strips of salted fish can make a great distraction.)

Rope, Hemp

Holds 1 person and their gear safely (~200 lbs).  Start making X-in-6 checks if the rope is put under heavier loads, impacts, or shearing (such as sawing it back and forth along a jagged lip).

<sidebar>I've played around with making some items weigh more when wet, such as rope.  I thought of this brilliant idea when I had to carry wet rope for 6 miles.  I don't know how much fun such a rule would be in play, but you know me: I like the idea of keeping simple hazards hazardous.  Water, darkness, climbs.  Water might be significant enough as it is (since it extinguishes most light sources), and may not need any extra rules.</sidebar>

Rope, Silk

Holds 3 people and their gear safely (~600 lbs).  Much stronger than hemp rope.

Salt, bag

2d6 damage if dumped on an ooze.  Can also be used to salt meat, turning it into rations.

<sidebar>Unsalted meat becomes inedible after 1 day.</sidebar>

Soap

Functions like grease except that it can get you cleaner instead of dirtier.  Necromantic potential: cow.

Spellbook

Holds 10 spells.  Built to resist water and fire, thank Heaven.

Torch

Lasts 2 hours.  If you drop them, they continue to burn.

<sidebar>If the party is fighting intelligent foes with darkvision, be sure to have them attack the light sources, especially if there's only one.  Orcs will happily use a combat maneuver to snatch a torch out of your hand and fling it 50' down the hallway.</sidebar>

by Viktor Titov

Alchemical Items

Acid, vial

Can be used to melt a lock, a metal bar, or an 4" hole in the floor, down to the level below.  With 10 vials of acid, you can melt a hole down the next dungeon level large enough to squeeze through.  On a creature, it does 1d6 damage per round for 3 rounds, or until washed off.

Aqua regia is mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid.  It's orange.  (Note: if you haven't had a chance to play with acids as part of your DM education, I suggest that you do.  Hydrochloric acid is nasty stuff--you can't even hold a small beaker of 12M at arm's length without it fucking with your eyes and respiration.)

Antidote, greater (Carbuncle)

A carbuncle is a smooth, green stone from the forehead of a creature that is also called a carbuncle.  The animal looks a bit like a soft-shelled armadillo famed for its capacity to will itself to die, spoiling its precious carbuncle stone in the process.

If swallowed, a carbuncle instantly cures any poison.

Antidote, lesser (Bezoar)

A rough stone harvested from the stomach of a nine-year-old goat that has been been a special diet its whole life, primarily consisting of shellac, persimmons, and potash.

If swallowed, a bezoar causes intense stomach pains, instantly curing any poison while simultaneously dropping you to 0 HP and disabling you for a round while the two poisons war within your body.

Antiplague, vial (Rosewater)

Diseases are caused by bad smells and miasmas.  The cure, therefore, is a good smell.  Breathing through a rosewater-scented handkerchief gives you +4 to save against contracting diseases.  If drank, it gives you the same bonus against ongoing diseases.

Any perfume will have the same effect; rosewater is just the cheapest one.

Black sugar, packet

If eaten, everything that is said to you for the next 8 hours will be treated as a suggestion.

Bomb (Goblin bombado)

The default bomb deals 3d6 damage in a 10' radius, Dex check for half.  You can cut the fuse to be any length you desire, up to 10 rounds.  A bomb will go off prematurely if it ever takes fire damage directly (100% chance) or if you take fall damage or fire damage while carrying it (2-in-6 chance).  This is just the default bombado--goblins can make a bomb as big as you want.

<sidebar>Like the name implies, bombados can only be purchased from, and manufactured by, goblins.  This is because they are made from large amounts of goblin dung (which are the only true explosives in Centerra, because of reasons).  For many goblins, dung is the only tax they are required to pay, and most goblin towns have a munitions factory located in a position of prominence.</sidebar>

Bomb, stink, vial

Made from volatile sulfur compounds and crushed stink bean.  When broken open, creates a thin cloud 20' in diameter.  Make a Con check each round of exposure.  Failure results in you being unable to do anything except stagger around retching.  Goblins and creatures without noses are immune.  Animals with powerful noses (wolves, etc) automatically fail their Con check.

Brain Jelly

If packed into the skull of a fresh-killed corpse, it will animate and perform simple commands.  Lasts 10 minutes if the body is damaged (default) or a full day if the only thing damaged was the brain (e.g. death via strangulation or head trauma).  The animate creature is not undead.

Cigarettes, pack

If smoked, gives you +4 to save vs fear and makes you much easier to track.  A pack of cigarettes lasts 3 days of dungeoneering (and holds 20 cigarettes).

Cave stench, vial

Smells of rotting meat.  Will attract scavengers and predators after 1d6 exploration turns.  Any tracking creature that passes through cave stench will have its delicate sinuses wrecked, and will be unable to track for the rest of the day.

Crystilletto

From Charcorra.  Single-use daggers that break off in a target, dealing 1d6 additional damage to that creature each time it takes a standard action.  Lasts until the creature spends a standard action extracting it.

Dehydrated water, ampule

Creates 100 gallons of water when broken. It pulls the water in from the air in the dungeon, so you may notice some chapped lips in the minutes after its use.  Works fine in deserts, but is obviously useless in outer space.

Dust of dryness, pouch

Absorbs 100 gallons of water.  If used as a weapon, deals 5d6 damage to a water elemental or 3d6 damage to an ooze.

Elixir of youth, vial (Azoth, vial)

Ages you 1d6+6 years towards the ideal physical age of 21.  Regrows lost limbs.  Cures mutations.  You permanently gain 1 point of Con.

Azoth is the end goal for most alchemists.  The Philosopher's Stone is only pursued by young alchemists, who have not lived long enough to fear old age.

Fairy dust, pouch

Harvested from fairies.  Allows you to fly (at walking speed) as long as you only think about happy things.  If you want to think about happy things while bad things are happening, you need to make a Charisma check.  It is impossible to think about happy things while taking damage.  Lasts 10 minutes.

Fireworks

Also of goblin manufacture.  Most people have never seen fireworks, and the world is full of misinformation regarding them.  Engravings and drawings of fireworks always depict them as leaping imps and dancing dragons.

Gas, Blinding

20' radius.  Con check vs blindness.  If you fail, you get a second Con check after 10 minutes.  If you fail that one, you remain blind permanently.

Gas, rage (Fumes of hell)

20' radius.  Con check vs rage like a barbarian.  (+2 to attack and damage, must attack each turn, no defensive or subtle actions, must pursue fleeing opponents, can attempt to stop raging prematurely 1/round with a 2-in-6 chance of success.)

Made by bottling the literal fumes of hell, where they emerge from the ground in the Brimstone Waste.

Gas, sleep (Olobia vapors)

20' radius.  Basically just a sleep spell.

Gas mask

Protects against dangerous gases and ambient diseases.  (Does not protect against injury-associated diseases, such as when a dire rat bites your leg and then breathes on the wound.)

Goblin hammer

It's really just a long-handled hammer, a grenade, and a detonated strapped together.  Single use, 3d6 damage.  100% chance of detonating if you take fall damage while carrying it, or if its dropped.  (If its in your hands when you fall, you can throw it in a random direction as a free action.)

Green slime, vial

Literally just a tube full of green slime.

This is the most illegal thing on this list.  Because of the enormous potential for destruction, simply carrying a vial of green slime into a city is sufficient evidence of Attempted Civicide.  You will be tortured for a long, long time before you are allowed to die.

DM's Note: Everything in the last paragraph is common knowledge.  Always inform your players before they bring horrible bioweapons up from the Underworld.

Grenade (Goblin grenado)

Explodes after 1d2 rounds, dealing 2d6 damage in a 10' radius, Dex check for half.  A grenado will go of prematurely if it ever takes fire damage directly (100% chance) or if you take fall damage  or fire damage while carrying it (3-in-6 chance).

<sidebar>Grenados are the best and you should give them to your players whenever possible.</sidebar>

Ingested poison, bitter (Nightshade)

Deals 1d6 damage per round for 1 round (successful Con check) or 3 rounds (failed Con check).  Bitter taste must be disguised with strong food.  Note: human NPCs in the GLOG rarely have more than 3 HD, and so a failed Con check here is basically sufficient to kill any NPC you want.

<sidebar>Just as explosives are the favored tactic of goblins, so are poisons the favored tactic of halflings.  If you want the fancy poisons, they're the ones to talk to.</sidebar>

Ingested poison, subtle (Orpiment)

Orpiment is a type of arsenic sulfide crystal.  It looks like an ugly orange-yellow gemstone.  It functions like Nightshade (above) but is absolutely undetectable by taste.

Ingested poison, deadly (King of Poisons)

No taste.  No save.  Manufactured by filling a large jar with toads, scorpions, snakes, and spiders.  After a day, the jar is opened and the surviving animal christened 'the king of poisons'.  It is fed pieces of the other animals before being dried out and ground up.

Insect repellant (Bog myrtle).

Makes you easier to track.

Jeklogen, vial

Turns you into your anti-self.  Invert all stats (e.g. 13 becomes 7) and invert all of your character's traits.  Boys become girls, black hair becomes white.  They know everything that the previous character knew.  Lasts 2 hours.

The new character is still under control the same player, but has the inverse goals. . . sort of.  They know that they won't exist unless the first character drinks more jeklogen, so they have a very good motive to behave.  (Bottom line: you aren't required to act against your own interests if your character drinks Jeklogen).  Nearly all of them resent this limitation intensely.

Liquid light, ampule

When exposed to air or water, it shines as bright as a torch for 10 minutes.  If splashed on a creature that is damaged by sunlight, deals 2d6 damage to them.  If splashed on a creature with darkvision, they get -4 to hit until they can wipe it off (standard action).

Midnight wind, ampule

Also known as vapors of night.  When broken, all fires within 10' are extinguished.  Fires larger than a campfire may survive (X-in-6 chance, determined by the DM).

Mithridatium, vial

Gives you a permanent +2 vs Poisons.  Stacks.

Mondmilch, vial

If drank, you will believe everything you hear for the next 30 seconds, and you will forget any conflicting memories.  If people tell you conflicting information during these 30 seconds, you will go mad.

DM's Note: get out a stopwatch and make the players do this in real time.

Mutagen, vial

Gain a random mutation.  If fed to a small animal (dog-sized or smaller) it grows into a mutant, humanoid version of that creature with Int 3d4.

Obliviax, packet

If this powder is eaten, total amnesia is the result.  If the powder is blown into someone's face, they forget the last minute.

Ooze, vial

This is just a baby ooze with 1 HP.  If you feed it a cow, you'll have a full size ooze on your hands in about 2 hours.  If you throw it on someone, it will deal 1d4 acid damage each round until it is scraped off.  Available in all the varieties of ooze.

Philosopher's Stone

A nondescript grey stone.  Anything it touches turns into gold.  There is no limit on this, so if you give it to your players, expect to have your whole campaign turned upside down.

If the philosopher's stone is ever broken, a thing like a small purple slug will emerge from the geode-like interior and fly away.  All the gold that it created will revert to its original substance.

Philosopher's Frost

Looks like a chunk of ice.  If it touches water, or a water-containing substance, it will freeze it.  Additionally, any water that comes into contact with materials frozen by the philosopher's frost will also be frozen.  (See also: ice-nine.)  If it ever spreads to the water table, rivers, or oceans, all of the world's water will freeze.

If the original piece of philosopher's frost is ever shattered, all of the alchemically-frozen water will revert to normal.  Creatures killed by it will revive without any ill effect except a phobia of the cold and nightmares of winter.

Poisoned Arrow, Sleep (Olobia Paste)

Con vs sleep.  Multiple arrows in a single turn still result in a single Con check vs sleep, but each arrow beyond the first gives a -1 penalty.

<sidebar>For the price of three arrows, you can poison a melee weapon.</sidebar>

Poisoned Arrow, Slow (Black Hellebore)

Takes 1 minute to take effect.  Con vs poison.  1d6 damage per round for 1 round (on a successful save) or 3 rounds (on a failed save).

Poisoned Arrow, Weak (Viper Venom)

Takes effect immediately.  Con vs poison.  1d4 damage per round for 1 round (on a successful save) or 3 rounds (on a failed save).

Poisoned Arrow, Weak (Red Devil Frog Slime)

Slime harvested from the skin of the red devil frog.  Takes effect immediately.  Con vs poison.  1d6 damage per round for 1 round (on a successful save) or 3 rounds (on a failed save).

Rust powder, pouch (Metal rot, powder)

Functions exactly as the touch of a rust monster.  Enough to turn a suit of armor into so much garbage.  The powder looks like gritty black mold.  Single-use.

Metal rot is actually a disease that rots metal.  It is common in water, which is why water causes rust.  It is killed by exposure to air.

by Brian McLachlan

Shrieker sprout

A cute little shrieker mushroom, about the size of a penis.  Shrieks whenever there is movement near within 10'.  Sold with each of its 'mouths' pre-gagged, so it won't be screaming the whole time you're carrying it in your backpack.

Smoke bomb

Creates a cloud of thick smoke 20' in diameter.  Great for escaping, since pursuers cannot see which way you went, and will choose randomly from the possible directions that they know about.

Sovereign glue, vial

Can join any two objects together.  Can repair broken weapons and armor.  Can attach a severed limb to a stump (fresh stump, old stump, your arm, someone else's arm, doesn't matter).  If poured in a wizard's ear, the wizard can fuse spells.  If two people make out with it in their mouths, they'll fuse.

Sovereign glue is greatly desired by all alchemists.  It's an essential precursor in the production of a philosopher's stone or azoth.

Spiders, bag

Exactly what it says on the tin.  1 point of damage on a direct hit, but will distract anyone nearby who is freaked out by thousands of spiders crawling everywhere.

Stim jelly (Talekeshi jelly)

A shitty health potion used by junkies and atheists.  You regain 1d4 HP and take 1d4 Con damage.  Fairly easy to find in slums.  Administered by rubbing it into the gums.  Chronic usage causes psychosis.  Made from the brains of abused cattle.

Truth Serum

Smells like rubber cement.  You'll have to force it down their throat.  Used for interrogation, but mostly just causes mad babbling.  Lasts 30 minutes, then the person falls unconscious for 12 hours.  Assuming the PCs are using this to interrogate people, roll a d4 every 10 minutes.

1 - mad rantings, useless.
2 - they respond to your questions, but they don't address your questions directly.
3 - they don't respond to your questions, but some things they say are potentially useful.
4 - they babble in response to your questions.  There is useful information hidden among the chaff.

Alicorn powder, pouch

Cures all diseases, poisons, and restores all lost HP.  Thereafter, you suffer the curse of the unicorn, and all critical successes you roll are inverted into critical failures.

Universal solvent, vial (Alkahest, vial)

Able to separate anything into its prime components.  Can purify anything (by separating the poison into an immiscible layer).  Can eject a soul from a body (potentially curing demonic possession).  If you want to get really 4e with it, you can also use it to separate enchantments from items, and move them onto other items.  Can move curses the same way.

In most cases, the element that was separated has now been washed off/vomited/sedimented as a separate material that you can now carry around in the vial, like magical run-off.  For example, if you used alkahest to extract a demon, the demon is now a small crystalline man formed for bile salts and denatured alkahest.  You can carry him in your pocket.  Rehydrating him allows him to escape this form, while eating him allows him to repossess you.

Alkahest is greatly desired by all alchemists.  It's an essential precursor in the production of a philosopher's stone or azoth.

Unwater, skin

Destroys dissolved oxygen in water.  Water-breathing creatures will begin to suffocate immediately.  Harmless if drank.  Can affect a potentially large area, about 500' in diameter.  Invented to repel merfolk attacks.

SCRAP PRINCESS PLAYS FOURTH EDITION

When the world finds out what you've done, Scrap, they're going to stop inviting you to the yacht parties that the OSR throws every month.  They're going to cut you off from the Cocaine of the Month Club, too.

READ THESE REVELATIONS AND TREMBLE, O UNTIDY FALSITY

Devil
Heavenly Bureaucrat

So:

Zulin rules the world from his golden Heaven, and yet his clergy do not claim that he is omnipotent.  He is certainly not omniscient.

This is an oversight, and it must be corrected.

Heaven is a vast and unknowable mansion, filled with gardens and apartments where the faithful dead enjoy eternity.  It's also a vast and incomprehensible maze of offices and archives, because long ago Zulin decided two things.

First, all of the world must be observed, cataloged, and judged.  Sins must be observed.  Souls must be tracked.  Prayers must be quantified and tabulated, weighed against the current and prospective sin markets, and then the summary given to the Angels of Judgement.

Second, he had absolutely no desire to do any of this.

Zulin exists in his own part of the labyrinthine mansion, where he is currently engaged in what is best described as an eternal tea party.  He entertains and is entertained.  He is attended by gods and godlings from Centerra, the planet's interior, the moon, and other such ultraterrestrial locales*.  Importantly, he is also accompanied by several of his greatest foes, who are unable to leave due to the chains of etiquette (which bind even gods) and who Zulin is unable to defeat (because he would be overpowered).

Once, perhaps, the Bureaucracy of Heaven was knowable, in the sense that a single mind could see it all, or at least hold a mental schematic of how it all fit together.  But it's outgrown that.  It outgrew that a long time ago.

The Goals and Means of the Bureaucracy

At this point, you can surely see that heaven has a great need for spies, bureaucrats, census-takers, writers of ethical protocols, judges, lawyers, and art critics (to judge the beauty of artworks made to glorify Zulin, and quantify the amount of sin that such an artwork compensates).

Heaven does not know how many grains of sand there are.  It does not know how many hairs are on your head.  It does not know the dreams of every babe nested at its mother's breast.  But they are trying to find these things out.

Angels are absolutely rubbish at counting sand.  That fact hasn't stopped Heaven from trying, though.

For the most part, angels are summoned creatures.  They exist for a day or an hour, performing some task, and then vanishing with a contented sigh.  So while they might count a million grains before their happy death, that only amounts to about a shovelful.  (And a small shovel, at that.)

The true power of Heaven lies in its Law: the ability to dictate the laws of nature, the truth of any terrestrial fact, and their power over men and their souls.  While Zulin is objectively the master of these considerable powers, their actual enforcement goes to the vast and unknowable offices of heaven, which are staffed by living humans, of course.

So after that angel has tabulated a million grains of sand, who do you think it reports to?  She is a woman in a white robe, with a sun-disk wired to a her skull, and a small serpent living her her sinuses that verifies her sums with an approving nod.

The First Bureaucrats

Mathematics was rewritten in order to make calculus possible.  The laws of mathematics were codified, and all the heretic possibilities were imprisoned far from Centerra, in order that 2+2 would always equal 4 (as opposed to all of the regional variations).

The principles of economics were invented.  Then logic.  Last grammar.  These things were delivered to the priests in the form of gold-inscribed mirrors, and the priests were then taught to teach these things to the children.

After a decade had passed, the Heavenly Examinations began to be held in every provincial center.  The minds that shone brightest during these examinations--the inventor, the artist, the mathmatician, the scientist--were taken up to Heaven to become its first bureaucrats.

(Maybe this is why everyone on Centerra is so fucked.)

The Church's examinations have slowed, but never really stopped.  There is still an examination held in Coramont every year, where the quick-adding, powerfully-adept children are taken up to Heaven for blessed employment.  But they are a minority.  A drop in the ocean.  How could they be anything else, when Heaven is a place with no restrictions on population, and a great need for able hands to hold an abacus?

The families there are old and strange and specialized.  While they know a great deal about a particular thing, they know very little about everything else.  For example, while the Department of Tabulation knows the sums of the sand on a great many beaches, many of its bureaucrats are unaware that there is anyone living down there at all.  As far as they know, the vast bureaucracy of heaven exists for the singular purpose of enumerating sand.  And they are entirely satisfied with this view of the world.

(Do not think them mad, dear reader.  They are as sane as you are, and no less perceptive.  Who are you to judge?  You know as much about the purpose of life as they do.  And while you might know a great deal about the evaluation, purchase, and distribution of wine in the UK, I suspect you know very little of the arcane workings of the machine that you are reading this on.  Perhaps the Truth is to be found in there?)

I won't go into any more broad details.  The races of heavenly bureaucrat are too varied for easy classification, and too bizarre for swift elucidation.

Instead, here are a (partial, very partial) list of Scrap Princess' vile misdeeds.  All readers are advised to bring a bucket adjacent, lest her wanton prurience drive you to vomiting all over your no-doubt tastefully decorated home.

Note 1: Nearly all of these guys can summon angels.

Note 2: Additionally, each department has "interns".  Souls serving their sentence in Purgatory.

Note 3: These classifications might seem like each department has a defined, organized domain and hierarchy.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Each task has multiple competing departments assigned to it, and the Gordian knot of authority clauses sometimes means that a department ends up serving its own sub-department (and other such explosions of apparent nonsense).

Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Geryon (Arch Devil), Dispater
Ministers
The higher ranking bureaucrats of heaven are all heads of their respective departments, which is nearly the same thing as saying that they are the heads of their respective families.  They jockey against each other for access to the Office of Natural Law, where they have the swiftest means to dispatch their enemies and recruit more resources for theirselves and their department.

For example, a 10% decrease in the rate of sedimentation would vastly decrease the amount of free sand grains in the world, leading to less need for the Department of Tabulation, leading to more effective petitions by other departments for diversions of human resources.  The pendulum of power swings thus.

Changing the natural laws in order to improve sedimentation constants may also be accompanied by a concomitant rise in kidney stones and renal failure.  This is none of their concern.  Suffering is a normal and expected part of mortality, and if it ever gets out of hand, they can expect the Department of Tribulations to issue an injunction.

This is why we have such things as tornadoes and syphilis, by the way.  A loving god wouldn't create those things.  They're Unforeseen Consequences (one of the smallest and most understaffed departments).

How many more of these do I have to do**?

Barbed (Lesser Devil)
Bureaucrat of Weights and Measures

Looks like a guy in a robe and a pointy shoes with a giant scale strapped to his back.  Accompanied by a cylindrical brass 'golem' that weighs a very specific weight.  His job is to weigh things and record whether they weigh more or less than his brass cylinder.  He must also destroy things that are the improper weight.  Can alter weights, distances.

Bone (Lesser Devil)
Bureaucrat of Tabulation

Looks like a guy who is entirely laminated with counting beads.  Has the powers to shoot beads, which is a little underwhelming.  Also has the power to audit one character sheet per round and investigate the numbers there.  If he finds any mistakes, he can imprison your character for as long as it takes you to find the errors and correct them.  (DM: six seconds of real-world time equals a combat round.)

Enrinyes
Bureaucrat of Maculate Conception

Soft, pink androgynous person, pristine and slick inside their tight robe.  Ensures that the appropriate sperm reaches the egg, and that spontaneous conception occurs according to design.  Also responsible for making sure the womb catches the proper type of soul.  Can pick two people of roughly compatible biologies and summon up their hypothetical offspring to fight them.  Can also stir your flesh like a spoon in a vat of multicolored paint.  Also capable of shrinking down and swimming in you like a frisky salmon, but this option is distasteful.

Horned
Bureaucrat of Continuance

Ensures the smooth passage of time.  Makes that time is uniform within a time zone.  Carries out conversions at the borders of time zones, so that travelers between them never even realize that they are passing through them.  Makes sure that everything doesn't happen at once.  Keepers of the Doomsday Clock.  Sentinels against the dinosaurs gnashing their way up the timelines.  One of the many reasons that PCs shouldn't attempt to time travel.

Like like men and women with bellies full of flashing sand, each grain beating out a different tempo, which together allows the bureaucrat to keep perfect time.  Powers are varied, and powerful.  Their wounds heal quickly, arrows slow in their flights, and many of their opponents die of old age.

One of the largest and most powerful departments.  The Minister of Continuance is Apocalypse, the only Minister that is not human.

Ice
Bureaucrat of Imagination

Their job is to judge the objective value of a piece of artwork.  They use a complex system of reference books to calculate this value, which is measured in Good Deeds.  These measurements are then passed on to the Department of Morality.

They are strange people, with flowing robes that shift colors and abilities every round.  They fight through a system of counter-attack.  Every action brings a reaction.  Learning these reactions is key to defeating them, but by then it might be too late.

Lemure
Bureaucrat of Dreams

Soft men, with soft skin and soft voices.  Vestigial faces cover vestigial minds.  They are dressed very, very well, and they move very, very politely.  This is why they are so easy to kill.

They sit at the bedsides, invisible, intangible.  On their tablet, they listen to the murmurs of your animal soul and record your dreams with their stylus.  These dreams are brought back up to heaven for classification, sorting, and interpretation.

This is a very important job.  Revelations of the future are most often first seen in dreams.  This is how Heaven knows so much about what is going to happen.  These are also the guys sent down to kick over the dreidel when your cleric casts augury.

Pit Fiend
Bureaucrat of Morality

A head full of eyes and a dossier filled with your sins.  Metal-skinned men who can blast down a door with a word, or limit the actions of everyone at the table.

They do not perform the collection or the sentencing of a soul (that's the Department of Death and Eternal Life), but they certainly measure it.  They are responsible for keeping track of you and all of your good deeds and sins***.  They don't have time to watch everyone personally, all the time.  But they use methods of deduction and interrogation to collect the information they need.  They hardly ever make mistakes.

A soul has value.  Knowing where it will end up after it dies is therefore a useful fact, and those who control the dossiers on those particular soul are worthy of a fee per soul.  And so dossiers are traded within the Department of Morality.  Not individually, of course, but most likely bundled into vast portfolios of thousands of mortals of similar moral bent.

-----------------------------------

*Scrap also eats cereal out of a shoe.  Like, the same shoe every time.  I don't even think she washes it.  I don't know where the other shoe is, who is eating out of it, or why we don't know about them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Scrap did something horrible to them to make them disappear.

**Also I met I guy at a gas station once who told me that once Scrap got drunk and made out with a  seagull, was also drunk.  The guy didn't buy anything except one of those heinous nut-covered donutoids though, so his ability to Discern Realities is probably pretty suspect.

***They would shoot vomit out their metal noses if they ever saw Scrap, though.  They were never trained to handle her.  (She would be a Level Nine Depravity Locus in their system of classification, though, if their system didn't stop at Level Eight.)

The Fighting Mountains

 The shadows of old birds

crawl over young stone

while pines huddle together

and knot crowns beneath the earth.

You fled south from the Cold Hills, leaving behind the icy fogs and venturing under the open arms of the sky.  You watched the dirt give way to granite.  You watched the sky grow huge and blue and flat as a plate.

And now your maps are wrong.  Beneath the shrugging pines and laughing choughs, your maps have become completely, utterly useless.

The rivers are running the wrong way.  The mountains are not where they were described.  The shrub-throttled 'road' that you followed so carefully ended at a flat slab of granite, almost as if the road had disappeared into a crack on the mountainside.

And so there you were, sitting on a glacial erratic, eating the last of your horse, when you looked at the mountains for the tenth time and finally saw their faces.  And once you saw their faces, everything snapped into cold focus, the realization filtering through shades of confusion, terror, and finally awe.

You were so shocked you dropped your chunk of horseflesh.

The Fighting Pile

A mountain might gain half a centimeter of elevation every year.  It might also move three centimeters to the north.  By standard geologic standards, this is a very fast mountain.  This is a leaping gazelle.

The mountains of the Fighting Pile move many hundreds of feet every year.  They are able to do this because they are not mountains, not quite.

They move so quickly because they are trying to kill each other.

What It Looks Like

Thick-browed mountains covered in smooth young granite.  Jagged ridges elbowing themselves over each other.  Piled strata on their sides dappled with shrubs.  Crows, chickadees, magpies, hawks.

A trained geologist would burn his books in a haze of tearful doubt.  The average traveler would never notice anything amiss.  (Except perhaps the occasional hillside of C-shaped trees, formed when the east side of a mountain becomes the west side of the mountain within a tree's lifetime.)

But examine the sides of the mountains, and you can see the clenched teeth and straining neck.  You can see ridges like forearms, struck through with veins of hematite, the whole hillside tense with pressure as one mountain attempts to unseat the other.

Stone hands wrapped around an escarpment, crushing it, forcing it back into the earth.  Two mountains restraining another, limestone crushed beneath granite.  A stone face, shattered and wincing, covered with granite boulders where a granite mountain struck it a century ago.

Minor earthquakes occur almost weekly.

The average mountain moves less than two feet per day.  And while many mountains duel alone or in triads, the great bulk of them all surge towards Young Mount Torgedda

The Monks of Young Mountain Torgedda

The monks live atop Young Mountain Torgedda, as they have lived for generations.  They travel across all of the mountains, following obscure routes and schedules.  Every morning, each mountain is drawn from a half-dozen different angles.

They have vaults of these drawings, yellow reams brushing the cobwebbed ceilings.  Cabinets groan with the weight of these papers.  Each of these pictures shows a fighting mountain.

And in the evenings, they study their sketches.  From these sketches, they have taught themselves to fight.  They tattoo Serpinski triangles onto themselves and break their hands so that the bones may grow back thicker.  These are the Fighting Monks.

Their leader is the Fight Master, who is said to be the greatest warrior in all of Centerra.  She was once known as Ziraludra of Worthless Zyro, a former lieutenant of the Pearl Divers Mercenary Company.

She wears the Four-Tower Crown.  Her lieutenants wear Three-Tower Crowns.  The sub-lieutenants below them wear Two-Tower Crowns.  Those below them, the fully inducted members of their cult, wear a white stone tied around their brow with a red string, because there are too many of them to adorn with crowns.

While the higher ranking members rarely engage in lethal pursuits (except to combat the monks of the void, who they despise), the novices are often killed in their practices.  Crushed by boulders while running up a hill, or thrown from precipices while learning The Bull Tosses His Horns.

They despise the void monks because they have a common history and contrary philosophies.  The fight monks believe that Life and Truth live in the heart and the blood and the muscle.  They believe that the meaning of life, if there is one, is to be found in this world, not the next.

The void monks think all of this is laughable.

Young Mountain Torgedda

The monks live atop his crown, a five-towered structure made from the same white limestone as himself.  It is the only intact building within the Fighting Pile.

According to the monks, he is the youngest mountain as well as the strongest.

The Mountain's sword lies discarded nearby.  A dusty, irregular mirror seven hundred feet long.  Its length has mostly been buried by spilled earth, and what bands are exposed to the sky are clouded and warped.  The sword is solid adamantine.  It'd be worth a fortune if anyone could ever find a way to break it into smaller pieces, or melt it, or reshape it.

The monks speak of the scabbard, a vertical shaft that has not been seen in centuries.

Young Mountain Torgedda is not the tallest of the fighting mountains, but it is the straightest and the strongest.  A number of slightly-salty springs cascade down his flanks, proof of his great exertion.  The amount of foreign boulders that lay scattered in his valleys is proof of his prowess.

His long reaching spurs and hard, quartz-rich fists have broken the jaws of many of his challengers.  And of course, there is the fate of Young Mountain Gundregor, of which the monks do not speak.

The Transmetallic Alchemists

They frequent Young Mountain Bora-Dhun.  It is believed that they may have discovered some way of communicating with the mountain, however unlikely that seems.

Or more likely, this is merely a convenient halfway point between the Four-Chambered Mountain to the east and the Hills of the Hollow Men to the west.  In any event, the alchemists will happily buy any stone eggs you find, laid by the shaggy grey orn, a giant bird that seems to be going extinct, since no one in living memory has ever seen them produce a viable egg.

The Miners of the Ridgeways

With the fickle orientations of the earth and the regular tremors, men have been taught very quickly not to erect anything larger than a tent on the Fighting Mountains.  And even a cluster of tents might have to move hastily one day when a miner notices a hillside shifting, in order to swat them with a rockslide.

They are not good miners.  Their excavations are hasty and easily collapsed.  They have a poor working knowledge of geology.  But they are fast, and they are desperate, and geology doesn't work here anyway so fuck it.

They circle the mountain like vultures, just flinty eyes casting their gaze over the next hill, wearing their donkeys' hooves down.  They are sometimes comically under-equipped, just a pair of boots, a pickaxe, and a hole in their belly that can only be filled with rubies.

Because this is where rubies come from.  It's possible that all the rubies came from the Fighting Mountains.

The miners live like vultures.  They watch the struggle like veteran gamblers, arguing about fighting techniques.  Sometimes they ape the positions of the mountains and then try to fight each other, trying to figure out which mountain has the advantage, and which mountain will be speared down.

The miners are looking for weaknesses.  A prone mountain pinned beneath his fellow.  A broken arm, where an outstretched ridge was broken over a knee.  A new wound, not yet scabbed over with landslides.

And then they rush in, with their shovels and pickaxes and buckets.  And they dig their terrible shallow mines, pour their agonized excavations out on the hillside beneath them.  And sometimes in that frantic flotsam, they find rubies.

Among the faithful, rubies are known as earthsblood, or ichorine, and they are seen as symbols of savage power made humble.  The largest ruby ever mined was the Heart of All-Desiring, and it was plucked from the chest of Young Mountain Gundregor.

Young Mountain Gundregor

The corpse of Young Mountain Gundregor lies to the south of Young Mountain Torgedda.  If you stand on Gundregor's shoulder, you can usually see the sun shouting off Torgedda's crown through the hurly-burly of the intervening mountains.

Young Mountain Gundregor was the mountain that came closest to defeating Torgedda.  Gundregor had his foe staggered and was driving his thumbs deep into Torgedda's eyes, when Torgedda threw Gundregor over his shoulders.  In fifteen years--the blink of an eye to a mountain--Gundregor's neck had been snapped.

Or so we assume.  Who can tell when a mountain is truly dead?  In any event, Gundregor has not stirred from where he fell.

You may be wondering what a mountain looks like when it is being thrown.  The monks know, although they do not like to speak of it.  The thing is considered obscene, embarrassing.  It is like seeing your father naked.  Which makes sense, since of course they consider the mountains their fathers.

Mountains draw power from their feet, submerged deep in the magma below.  To throw a mountain involves wrapping your arms around its neck and whipping it over your hips hard enough to wrench it from where it is anchored.  Assuming you are a mountain, of course.

Imagine wrenching out someone's leg from its socket over the course of a decade and you'll have some idea.

Spurts of magma shot up along the fractures as indecent strata were uprooted, pulled up several feet each day, until the roots of Gundregor strained at the clouds, and found no footholds among them.

Mountains are very strong in once direction.  They have great compressive strength.  But hold them sideways, and they will break.  And that is what the great legs of Gundregor did, as they hung in the cruel air, like fingers poised over piano keys.  Leg-lengths fell by the quarter mile, hemorrhaging stone, magma, unnamed ores, and yes rubies as well.

Gundregor groaned and shook, and all the mountains stopped their struggles to watch their brother die sideways in the sky.

When they perform this technique, the monks call it technique The Bull Tosses His Horns.

Rubies are normally mined from the seams of the mountains, when they are revealed in moments of weakness.  But Gundregor, unmoving, was completely hollowed out.  The miners descended on its body like flies.  The largest ruby in the world was produced from this pillaging: the Jewel of All-Desiring, which vanished from history amid a flourish of corpses, and many enormous jewels are wont to do.

The other mountains have sealed Young Mountain Gundregor through small landslides, perhaps the equivalent of kicking some dirt onto a corpse.

Explanations

The wizards claim that the mountains are fighting for the Crown of the Earth.  (It is not the structure on top of Young Mountain Torgeddon, but rather a ring of solid diamond inside him.)  Mountains think on the same time scale as us, but they move much slower.  Because they have so much time to think, their movement are ultra-efficient, with each punch carrying years of careful calculation, like dueling oil tankers piloted by genius machines.

The Church claims that this is the final result of Zulin's extirpation of the powers of Earth.  With the volcanoes dead and the mountains sleeping, the last batch of powerful Earth spirits has been confounded into destroying themselves.

The elves claim that this is normal behavior for mountains.  They are fighting to occupy prestigious positions in a new mountain chain.  There are many similar instances recorded in elven libraries. . . just none in the pamphlets of human history.

Elven Revolvers

Gunpowder was discovered a long time ago in Centerra.  It just doesn't work anymore.

When they were taming the land and laying straight roads, they were also fighting the fire cults.  They won, as they always do, and the fire gods were sundered.  Some were gelded and boxed.  Some were driven into the sea and quenched.

You can still see some of them from the Victorious Coast.  Time and tempest have worn away some of their features, and only blasphemers claim that they are merely offshore rocks.

It was around that time when gun powder stopped working.

<sidebar> The only survivor of that is Lady Hellfire, the only volcano on Centerra.  Where fire and stone failed, paper prevailed, and she now existson the but should the treaty ever be declared void, it is likely that the last volcano on Centerra will cool. </sidebar>

not ornate enough

Elven Revolvers

Elves are loathe to ever give something up once it has been claimed.  The same is true for their firearms.

And so while the other races were cussing and melting down their cannons, the elves were figuring out ways to retrofit their pistols.

Elven pistols are baroque and highly personalized.  Each one is unique piece of art, and is worth a fortune to a historian.  They're also very functional--elven goods rarely break.

The pistol known as Charge Onwards Brave Horse bears only the slightest resemblance to a horse.  Mithril is used for the reinforced parts, but most of the rest of the gun is alchemically strengthened glass, stained a pale blue color.   It gives you +4 to hit.

One DM to another: I think guns are cooler than wands.  And anyone can use them.  I plan to give them out in place of wands whenever possible.

Elven Ammunition

In the absence of gunpowder, the elves were forced to find new propellants for their guns.  It was a welcome diversion, after the wars.  Like the guns, each part of the cartridge appears to be handcrafted.

We're still not sure what they used, but it is highly magical.  The ammunition is sorted into categories based on the shape of the shell and the type of note produced upon firing.  Note: while there are several variations of the "circle of dancers" cartridge, this one is the most common.

Casing: painted circle of dancers, tossing rose petals

Firing: brass horn chord, G# major

Effect: deep punctures that billow white smoke

Mechanics: 3d6 damage

Casing: engraved elephant, flayed

Firing: Harsh guitar strum, ascending, C#

Effect: Incandescent bullet burns path into retina for a few minutes

Mechanics: 2d6 corporeal damage, 2d6 incorporeal damage (actually fires two bullets, one ethereal and one material; enemies that can affect both are struck by both)

Casing: sculpted songbirds erupting from a mouth

Firing: clashing cymbals

Effect: Shooter appears to turn into gunsmoke, then dissipate

Mechanics: 2d6 damage and teleports you adjacent to your target (shooters also holding a rapier and trained in elven teleplay can make a free attack)

Elven ammunition is only ever found in dungeons or looted from elf lords, and only then in small amounts (1d6, maybe 2d6).  Its manufacture is an utter enigma.

How To Design Death

From a game design standpoint, the purpose of a Death and Dismemberment Table is four-fold. 

Death Table as Death Dealer

When players start Losing The Game, the Death Table delivers the most final punishment the game offers: death.  It is probably the most obvious knobs a game designer has when they want to adjust the difficulty of their game.

Actual death is the most permanent form of punishment the system offers.  You don't get to play the character you've grown attached to.  There are smaller versions (unconsciousness, petrification, etc), but Death is the big one.

Death Table as Urgency Modulator

So one of your companions just got dropped.  They're lying on the ground, bleeding out.  How urgent is it that your PC runs over there to heal them?  It depends on the system.

• Some games, dropped characters always revive as long as you get to them eventually.  
• Other games require 3 death saves, or negative HP at a certain point.  Either way, these systems allow the other players to gauge how near death their companion actually is, and react appropriately.
• There's a third option, where a dying character has a small chance of dying each turn unless tended to.  I can't think of any examples, but it's the one that I am going to playtest next.

But think about this when you're writing your Death Table (or the section of your rules titled Death and Dying). Because it has a big effect on gameplay when there are 1-2 characters laying on the ground, bleeding out.  

This has a big effect on how hard it is for a party to bounce back from a losing comeback.  How much do you want to encourage/discourage comebacks?  (And it's easy to say, yeah, comebacks are exciting and fun, but those same mechanics also make near-death experiences feel a little shallower and less impactful.  If the whole party bounces back to full HP within 10 minutes of half the party getting dropped by Gutripper Demons, it makes combat's effects only last as long as the combat.)

Death Table as Behavior Driver

I'm talking about what happens after your character recovers from the near-death experience.  Injuries, basically.

You can approach this from a simulationist point of view, and start thinking about all the different types of injuries its possible to get, then think about how you'd model that in your system.

You can approach it from the maximum chaos point of view: what are all the possible effects I can invent?  

You can approach it from a gamist point of view, and think about what sort of behavior do you want to encourage after a player nearly dies, then think about the fiction that supports it.  This is where I'm at right now.)  You think about what kind of behavior is worth encouraging when the party is getting their ass kicked?

• Example: if survivors get adrenaline rushes and extra attacks, 0 HP doesn't become as uniformly dreadful.  It encourages (okay, allows) parties to come back from near-TPKs (easier).
• Example: if survivors get permanent, crippling injuries, it (hopefully) encourages them to retire their character.  But in the short term, it doesn't discourage them from pushing deeper into the dungeon.  If there is no mechanical advantage to retreating and healing up, why retreat and heal up?
• Example: if survivors get short term penalties, they (hopefully) will retreat and rest until those injuries heal.

So you can build Rules for Dying that incorporate any or all of these possibilities.

Where I'm at right now, I think I want near-deaths to be strong suggestions that a party should get the fuck out of the dungeon and go rest somewhere safe.  (I've mostly given up on having different hit locations and tracking the duration of different, ongoing injuries.  You'll see.)

Death Table as Scar Giver

Near death experiences can reinforce the character's story (i.e. series of comedic mishaps).  if your character is missing a hand, hopefully they can remember where they lost the hand.  They can be used to strengthen a character's identity.

GLOG Death Rules (Version 26)

When you take damage in excess of your HPs ability to absorb it, you roll on the Death Table.  Roll d20 + excess damage and look up the result on the table.

Natural 1 = Regain 1d6 HP.  Gain a cool scar.
5 or less = Prone and Disarmed.
6-15 = Knocked Out. Beaten for 1 day.
16-25 = Dying. Beaten for 1 day.  Gain an ugly scar.
26+ = Dead

Scars
No effect beyond the cosmetic.  Write them down on the back of your character sheet.

Beaten

• -2 to Attack rolls.
• 20% spell failure chance.
• When you roll on the Death Table, add +10 to your result.

Knocked Out

• At the end of each combat round, make a DC 11 Con check.  
• If you succeed, you wake up.  (You are still Prone and Disarmed.)
• If you roll a natural 1, you lose a point from a random stat. 
• If anyone spends a standard action tending to you, you wake up.

Dying

• At the end of each combat round, roll a d20.
• Natural 1: you lose two points from a random stat.
• 2-9: you lose a point from a random stat.  
• Natural 20: your condition improves to Knocked Out.
• If you've lost more than two stat points from this injury, you die.
• Anyone can attempt to stabilize you with a DC 15 Heal check or a DC 17 Int check.  Once you are stabilized, your condition improves to Knocked Out.

Magical Healing

Magical Healing always restores your HP from the regular floor of 0 HP, eliminating any Knocked Out or Dying conditions.  (A character healed for 3 HP will be left at HP 3.)  You remain Beaten, however.

Discussion

The big driver of behavior here is the Beaten condition.  It does two things.

• It erodes a party's ability to kill things without diminishing their ability to run the fuck away.
• It makes future near-deaths much, much worse.

Those two things, hopefully, should motivate the affected player to seek shelter for the night.  I've played removing one of those two bullet points or the other, or making it stacking, but I think it's bad enough as it is.  

Players are free to push onward, but they'll do so knowing that they are putting themselves at risk.

I don't like players dropping to near-death on one turn and then popping back up on the next round like a jack-in-the-box.  Getting dropped to dying is probably going to be at least 3 turns of downtime: one round spent getting out of Dying, one round getting out of Knocked Out, and one round standing up and recovering your dropped sword. Magical healing can shorten this to 2 rounds, and that sounds about right.

Is it too difficult to revive a dying character?  My back of the napkin math says that an average character has ~75% chance to save a person from death, if they act immediately.  If multiple characters are helping, the chance is even higher.  (There is a high amount of variability, though.)

The stat loss should feel awful because dying is awful, but at the same time, the GLOG gives characters three chances to improve a stat whenever they level up, so stats that get lowered tend to not stay low for long.  Stat loss isn't as dire as it would be in other versions of D&D.  This is the part that puts the "mangled fingers" and "concussion" in the fiction.

I also stepped away from my Just-In-Time philosophy of resolution (the effects are tested at the end of the combat round, rather than at the beginning of the players turn) because I want dying to be a little more predictable.  If a character drops from Dying to Dead, I want them to see it coming, not have it pop out of the blue.

This rewrite also has the advantage of being simple enough that I can memorize it, which I like.