Selecting Weapons and then Attacking Things With Them (Part 2: Polearms)

Part 1.
Part 3.

Treat weapons as physical objects in your games not just stats. Here's some stuff on how to do it. Stats listed are from the 5e Compendium. Let's go.

Part 2: Polearms

Polearms in General: "Reach" property adds extra attack range, two-handed.
Polearms can work pretty similarly to the quarterstaffs & staves entry from Part 1. They've got all the typical uses of a long stick, but with the added complication of a striking surface such as a spearpoint, hammer, or axe. There's a real risk of hurting yourself with that if you swing the weapon around carelessly, and doing something like testing water depth in a ford is less attractive if you've got a rust-prone iron spike on the butt of your spear. That said, it's all still possible. Use the halberd to hold up a washing line! Poke dead bodies with it! Use the shaft of a spear to trip someone!


Javelin: 1d6 piercing, can be thrown.
Typically you'd want javelins to be light and short enough to throw with one hand- factors that don't exactly make a good primary battlefield weapon. Don't be afraid to break javelins after one or two throws. Hell, break them after one or two strikes. Consider one of the uses of the Roman pilum, and allow javelins to lodge into shields & armour before breaking, weighing down your opponents and their equipment.

Spear: 1d6/1d8 piercing, can be thrown.
About the most simple weapon ever made- a pointy stick. Spears can be thrown but I'd limit their range more than the javelin statblock above since they're heavier, but also that makes them sturdier. See this image with reproduction European spears compared to javelins. There's so many kinds of spears I can't even come close to giving a good representation of them all, but just remember there's a big difference in usage (if not in stats) between something that's just a spike on a stick and something with wings, barbs or lugs. Even if you keep the stats the same, consider the risks of the latter being stuck in armour on a failed attack, or of trapping an enemy weapon on a successful parry. Also, some spears have sharpened edges, allowing them a limited ability to slash as well as just stab.

Pike: 1d10 piercing, reach, two-handed.
The principle for a pike is pretty straightforward, just take a spear and make it longer. Examples include the Macedonian sarissa, the partisan, or the svärdstav. Just remember the same rules on lugs/wings/barbs/blades apply as above. Also, you'll want to account for how a 2m long shaft would be hell to maneuver indoors. On the other hand, it's great at keeping opponents at a distance.

Lance: 1d12 piercing, heavy, two-handed, one-handed on a horse.
Lances were essentially spears intended for use on horseback. Specifically, for a big glorious high-impact charge on horseback. I'd personally just give them the same stats as a spear or a pike, myself, with 5e's special "one-handed on horseback" caveat.

Trident: 1d6/1d8 piercing, can be thrown.
If you want your spear to be a trident or bident, just use spear or pike stats. Technically there's real world weight and impact distinctions, but most RPGs are nowhere nearly granular or crunchy enough for that to matter. Just like lugs/spikes/barbs in the spears category above, consider narrative implications of extra spikes rather than mechanical ones. A trident might get wedged in armour more easily, for example.


Halberd: 1d10 slashing, two-handed.
Halberds are pretty classic polearms, consisting of a spearhead spike and an axe blade, often with a rear spike or hook. The draw of a halberd is versatility, though coming at the cost of extra weight & more metal being required than a simple long axe or pike. There's plenty of different Swiss halberds, but other weapons such as voulges, guisarmes, pollaxes or ji have similar properties. Make sure to account for thrusts with the speartip, slashes with the axe head, and potentially armour-piercing strikes with the rear spike or trips or grabs with the rear hook. Switch 'axe slashes' for a different spike or a hammerhead, and you have a weapon such as a bec de corbin or a Lucerne hammer. Remember to account for the weight & length of the pole when trying to maneuver in close quarters!

Glaive: 1d10 slashing, two-handed.
For some reason, this is considered mechanically identical to a halberd in 5e. A glaive is essentially just a blade on a stick. They vary from smaller slashing blades like the naginata, to the woldo or guandao, to much heavier designs such as the war scythe or fauchard or bill. Some of these might enable thrusting attacks, but the emphasis is on cuts and slashes, for better or worse. Get your players to specify (or draw) a shape for their blades, and then factor in spikes, hooks, etc. as above.


With all the weapons above, consider asking for a special proficiency in order to make use of their multiple functions. Stabbing with a spear is easy, and anyone can pickup a halberd or pike and use them to at least some extent. Chaining together slashes and thrusts with a halberd is harder, and making use of the rear hook at opportune times takes practice. Assume a 'soldier' class can do it, but maybe ask the scholarly magic-user where they learned to unhorse cavalry with a billhook (and by doing so, give them an opportunity to fill out their backstory).

The last thing to remember about polearms is the pole itself. Even a wooden pole is difficult to cut through, iron or steel is even harder but increases the weight. Swinging around a polearm is tiring and difficult, even moreso if it's got three potential striking surfaces weighing down the far end like a halberd does. If a player tries to bring a lance or pike to a dungeon, punish them for it by having them get it stuck in every single doorway until they realize that their inventory takes up physical space!

Selecting Weapons and then Attacking Things With Them (Part 1: A Bunch)

Part 2.
Part 3.

So there's a lot of weapons in an average D&D book, right? Tons of them. So how do you use them? Firstly, don't forget that weapons have non-combat uses, like all items. Udan-Adan said it better than I could. Battleaxes can cut down trees, daggers can cut a cheese wheel, swords can be used as levers if you're trying to pry open something, staves can be used to trigger pressure plates from afar.

Secondly, don't just let a default 'damage type' and an 'attack' action override your ability to role-play and creatively problem solve. Many historical (and modern) weapons were and are multipurpose, intended to do more than one thing. Work a dash of this into your gameplay, reward some creative thinking, and you're already priming your players to think of both weapons and monsters as real physical objects that interact, not simply blocks of numbers that modify their die rolls.

Seeing as I'm a hack, I've simply picked out the default 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons compendium and the table of default weapons from there. Links are there so you can see what the hell I'm talking about, so I've used them liberally.

Part 1: The easy stuff.

Dagger: 1d4 piercing damage. Can be thrown.
Not much to add here, is there? Remember that a dagger can be (in most cases) used to stab OR to slash, and that there's a lot of historical daggers. Check out a 20th century trench knife for a 'dagger' intended to be used in tight quarters, especially those that are also a set of brass knuckles. There's a bunch of other historical daggers, from the rondel dagger known for round grips and a cylindrical tang, to the somewhat phallic bollock dagger, to more specialised things such as the 'parrying dagger' or 'swordbreaker' intended specifically to be used in concert with another weapon. Rules-wise I wouldn't do anything crazy, but letting a player choose whether they're armed with a bichuwa or a cinquedea can add both some personal flavour and the possibility of a unique narrative or puzzle-solving use down the line.


Club: 1d4 bludgeoning.
Greatclub: 1d8 bludgeoning, two-handed.
Mace: 1d6 bludgeoning.
'Club' is possibly the broadest possible weapon definition in the world, and 'big club' isn't exactly a narrow category either. As with daggers, there's no need for major rules changes or alternative uses for either. Typically, a 'mace' is essentially a club, with a specially shaped striking head. I'd personally use the statline of a 'club' or 'great club' to refer to a caveman-looking lump of driftwood, and the statline of a weapon like a mace, maul or warhammer for something more interesting like a Japanese kanabō, Fijian totokia, Indian shishpar, 20th century trench club, or Maori patu.


Handaxe: 1d6 slashing, can be thrown.
So the actual lines between 'axe' and 'handaxe' are blurry as hell, so i'm interpreting this as a hatchet or tomahawk rather than an actual 'hand axe' which is more of a roughly shaped hand-sized rock. Essentially, I'd use this statline for any axe that can be reliably used as a thrown weapon. Something like say, a fransisca. The weight of an axehead lets the weapon both cut and bludgeon, which is handy if your party is fighting skeletons that don't have any skin or organs to cut! Plus, it's an axe. Cut down a sapling with it, or whatever. Shave, if you're crazy.


Quarterstaff: 1d6/1d8 bludgeoning.
There's lots of different names for them, from the Chinese gùn to Japanese bō or jō to the English... quarterstaff. There's long and short versions, modern and ancient, metal or fiberglass, specially carved or hacked off a tree. A staff isn't exactly a 'good' weapon as it lacks any hand-guards, specialized striking surfaces, grips, spikes or blades. They are, however, versatile. Staves can be used to strike or thrust, gripped at one end or by the centre, held like a spear, held like a baseball bat, used to block or parry, and used in one hand or two depending on their length. They're also highly practical out of combat- as levers, used to check the depth of a ford, used as a walking stick, or used to poke a dead body from 5-6' away to make sure it's not about to get back up again. It's also probably the least lethal weapon on this page, as it can reliably be used for leverage in grappling or to trip opponents, while also still being able to crack ribs if you go all-out. I do think 5e overestimates its base damage a bit, though, and pretty much any sort of padding will entirely ruin its ability to actually hurt.
Fun fact: this is actually the only weapon on this list I've ever used in a 'fight'. More than once.


Whip: 1d4 slashing, long reach.
I personally wouldn't call a whip a 'weapon' but obviously Wizards of the Coast didn't consult me for the 5e Player's Handbook. It's even less lethal than the quarterstaff above, but not in an effective way. Classic examples are bullwhips and stockwhips. Some, like the cat o' nine tails were intended to be used as punishment for convicts and sailors, whereas the sjambok was notorious in parts of Africa (including the Congo). There's a common thread here- none of these were intended to be used on any human capable of fighting back. A whip's very unlikely to pierce any sort of armour, and in many cases won't even pierce clothing. If a player wants to use a whip as a weapon, they've got three main options. Firstly, using it exclusively to cause minor pain & injury, or as an Indiana Jones style tool. Secondly, make it just somehow magical, like Castlevania's Vampire Killer whip. Thirdly, put weights or hooks on the end... at which point it stops being covered here and gets shuffled under flails.

Battleaxe: 1d8/1d10 slashing.

Greataxe: 1d12 slashing. Two-handed.

Axes are a highly effective tool, and a versatile weapon. There's a bunch of different kinds so a quick wrap up is difficult, but you could see anything from a double-bit utility axe to the bearded axe, to the aforementioned francisca. Greataxe is a more 'gamey' term for a dedicated two-handed axe. Some real world examples include the bardiche, Dane axe or pollaxe; however some variants of these should really be considered polearms. A video-game style greataxe can exist in your setting, but any character using one really should have superhuman strength. No matter the size, most axes can be used to cut with the blade OR strike with the back of the head. Some like the bardiche have long sweeping spikes at the top or bottom of the head, allowing for thrusting strikes. The 'beard' that gives the bearded axe its name can be used to assist in parrying and hooking enemies or their weapons, or can allow the wielder to shift their grip under the blade and use the axe like a push dagger or ulu.

Flail: 1d8 bludgeoning.

Oh boy, the flail. A 'typical' flail seems to be what the compendium stats are going for, but there's some doubt that those were ever used in real combat. If you look at historical flails, you've got everything from 'peasant flails' to the Chinese three-section-staff and meteor hammer to Japanese nunchaku. Let's break these into groups.

Chain Staves: Two section staff, peasant flail. Swing the stick, hit with the dangly bit. For stats, I'd use the closest non-chain polearm. These are the common real-life ones!

Chain Clubs: Nunchaku, Kusari-fundo, a length of bike chain with a fishing sinker on the end, Meteor hammer, or 'classic' chain flail. Same pros and cons as above, but smaller enough to hold in one hand. I'd use a mace statline for a smaller one, or a warhammer statline for a bigger one.

Crazy Fantasy Stuff: Say, the Witch King's flail from the Lord of the Rings movies. (Credit to Stelter Creative for the image! That's some amazing work.) Use the statline for whatever greataxe or massive warhammer you want at this point, reality has no bearing.

Bladed Flails: I'd list kusarigama, urumi, any sort of chain or bladed whip, and some things like the Chinese rope dart. They're not quite the same, but a lot of the same pros and cons apply, as well as some unique ones (like the ability to throw and retrieve a rope dart).

All of these chain weapons have a similar property: the user stopping the section they hold does not necessarily stop the striking end of the weapon. Start swinging a flail then bring your arm to a halt, and the striking portion will continue to move through. On the positive side, that means that a weapon or shield intercepting the swing doesn't necessarily stop the weapon from impacting. On the negative side, this makes it hard for the wielder to stop the weapon once they've started an attack. In play, I'd give the weapon a chance to wrap around guards and shields to deal damage, but also a chance to injure the user on a missed attack. Depending on the length of the chain or rope, you could also use it to garrote an unsuspecting victim, trip someone up, or even restrain them if you can keep them still for a bit.

Warhammer: 1d8/1d10 bludgeoning.

War Pick: 1d8 piercing.

Maul: 2d6 bludgeoning, two-handed.

Despite what D&D tries to tell you, real warhammers don't weigh all that much. The Forgotten Realms wiki treats warhammers as miniature sledgehammers or combat-adapted mallets. A medieval warhammer, on the other hand, looked more like this. Compared to a mace, they have a much smaller striking head, and many actually had a spike or hook on the rear, similar to a war pick. Like a halberd, a war hammer or pick was often a multipurpose tool designed to pierce or crush through heavy armour. A 'maul' on the other hand is essentially a tool rather than a weapon, but a tool like a splitting maul or a spike maul would do serious damage to a human... if they stood still long enough to get hit. If you have someone with superhuman strength that can swing that, however, then go for it! No matter the size of the hammer, it's probably going to be intended as a tool for a specific purpose, a tool for multiple purposes, or a weapon for multiple purposes. Pierce armour with one side of the hammer, then spin and hit with the other side to smash apart a skeleton.

Polearms will need to be consigned to Part 2. Swords will need a whole page to themselves. I somewhat regret my choice of topic.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: More Than Just A Name (Part 2)

Part 1.
Part 3.

So now I've staked out a few traditional archetypes, how can we actually subvert and redefine these bastards?


Immortal / Mortal extraplanar entities of great power.
The first change I'd make to how these suckers work is to give them interesting domains. A God of Fire is cool, a God of Thunder is cool, a God of Justice is cool. If you want to make new gods, give them new domains. In my own random scribblings, I created a pantheon of deities for a random mythic fantasy setting. Some of the gods included...

Llorue, God of Repose. Her domain included sleep aids, anesthesia, medicine, euthanasia and death. She opposed the undead, obviously, but her church kinda doubled as a Voluntary Humanoid Extinction Movement that sought a peaceful but very final rest for everything.

Velir, God of Servitude. Honoured by bodyguards, knights, samurai and servants. It's actually kind of rude to 'worship' Velir just due to his nature, but working in a hierarchy is considered paying respects. Velir actually used to be a god of Fellowship in the backstory, whose role was usurped by another being.

So yeah, those are my amateur attempts. Give them weird and contradictory domains. Have them uphold morals that don't align with 'normal' human beliefs and thoughts. Have, as Arnold Kemp suggested, 'foreign' angels and gods, like an Angel of Greed or an Angel of Pride, encouraging the virtues of Pride and Greed, and a Demon of Agriculture or a Demon of Peace that encourage the sins of pacifism and self-sufficiency.

If you want to use default D&D gods, go for it! Make them interesting by applying their domains constantly and always. Have Tyr bear nothing but scorn for pacifists and altruism! Asmodeus respects those who try to outwit him, and idolizes those who try! Gods of Fire may scorn burials and demand cremations, Gods of Air demand sky burials (NSFW), Gods of Nature demand their followers to lobotomize away their higher brain functions. These don't always need to be negative, I'm just a pessimistic son of a bitch.

Incredibly powerful mortals, mages or spirits.

This is almost an ideal level for your deities to be at for a sword & sorcery dungeon crawler. A 'serpent god' that draws power from the ritual sacrifices performed by their literal dozens of worshipers can be both a terrifying threat and something that can be killed by a handful of greed-obsessed scrubs with crowbars and 10' poles. The downside is that a population of gods that can be killed by the aforementioned scrubs raises a major question- namely, 'why haven't some other scrubs already dealt with these guys?'

These 'godlets' are best suited to a setting where the PCs are constantly roaming and exploring, discovering new parts of the world and new strange cults & religions. A large, established hub of civilization with temples & cathedrals built to a 'god' that has 30 hitpoints and does 8 damage is going to feel a little shallow when the party learns that Orthros the Mighty is worse in a fight than his pallbearers. 

Charlatans, grifters, con-men and men behind curtains.

See above, I guess. The main difference is that you can put these guys at the heart of an established religion even if they can't fight their way out of a paper bag, and explain it as them just being really good at lying and faking miracles. I wouldn't lean too hard on frauds myself, but I'm not running your campaign, am I?

Calamari-themed eldritch beings from beyond the stars that are dead but dreaming.

Oh, these bastards are getting their own post.

God, G-d, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, The Light, The Lord, The Tetragrammaton.

Last but not least. I'd approach these Big Boys one of two ways. First, have them be a reclusive creator god that doesn't really interfere much. Have it be up in the air as to whether they even exist! Sure, their clerics or whatever have magic, but so do the setting's wizards and sorcerers. The other option is to do a straight mythic black & white fantasy setting, and set up Big G as a counterpart to an ancient evil (or several ancient evils). Honestly I think that 'Christian God But With A Dragon Head' is probably the least interesting way to put religion in your setting, but I'm biased.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: Who Is This God Person, Anyway? (Part 1)

Part 2.
Part 3.

I was literally just given the name of this article with no further context and told to make an article on it. So I did.
Deities. I see them used in a lot of RPG settings in a few defined contexts, so here's a discussion.


Immortal extraplanar entities of great power.
Tyr, Pelor, Pan, Zeus, whatever. They have their own realms and afterlives and grant spells to clerics. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. You'll see tables of them in any Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide. I doubt I could write anything new there.


Mortal extraplanar entities of great power.
Often treated the same as the ones above, but more likely to have an actual 'challenge rating' or stats. There's still tables upon tables of info on them in countless published settings, but a 'mortal' deity sits closer to the player's level as something that can be spoken to, bargained with or even killed. In D&D 5e parlance, the above Gods would empower PCs using the Cleric class, whereas these lower-case gods would be closer to a Warlock PC's Patron. (Except the Great Old One class, but see below.)


Incredibly powerful mortals, mages or spirits.
These guys play by the 'rules' way more than anyone else. For a good pop-culture example, think of the forest gods & demons from the (excellent) film Princess Mononoke. Lord of the Rings technically isn't an example of this (see below), but it's entirely valid from a surface reading of the books (or from watching the films) to see characters like Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron and even Shelob simply as mortal beings of immense power and knowledge. Worthy of worship and adoration, capable of enforcing their will upon the world by means incomprehensible to many mortals.


Charlatans, grifters, con-men and men behind curtains.
This probably works just fine in a no-magic or low-magic setting, and can be a great mix-up for a high-fantasy or sword & sorcery campaign. The bolts of lightning are just a big taser! The booming voice is a megaphone! The terrifying winged beast is a taxidermied chimera only seen in silhouette! I'll probably do a bit on fake-out campaign themes & villains in the future so this'll be better covered there.


Calamari-themed eldritch beings from beyond the stars that are dead but dreaming.
Cthulhu! Zalgo! Hadar and Gibbeth and Acamar! The Eldrazi! Anything TVTropes would call an 'eldritch abomination!' I hate these. Hate, hate, hate. The concept is fine, but in Dagon's name is it easy to abuse these. Why give your entities cohesive motivations when you can just say they're 'eldritch' and leave it at that? Why create a unique visual appearance for your monster when you can just rip off a racist paranoid weirdo from the 1920s? That said, you can do them well. Guess I just found myself another article.


God, G-d, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, The Light, The Lord, The Tetragrammaton.
There are 'gods' and then there's 'God.' This is the second one. They're omnipotent, or may as well be. They're outside context and do things that 'lesser' gods cannot. Most importantly, they're just a straight-up stand in for the Christian god in that they have no flaws, are perfect, do no wrong, and are an absolute moral arbiter of everything ever. You'll probably know them as Eru Ilúvatar from Tolkien's writings, or Aslan and the Emperor from Lewis. More recently, you've got the 'White God' in Butcher's Dresden Files novels, a being that seems ineffable from the point of view of not just people that regularly shake hands with Hades and Odin, but from Hades and Odin themselves.

So now we have an idea on what we regularly see, how can we mess around with it to create new stories? Find out in Part 2.

1d12 Things to do in Your Moment of Death When All Hope is Lost.

Your luck (and HP) just ran out. You're facing the firing squad, looking down the shaft of an arrow, whatever. You've got maybe a few precious seconds. Roll 1d12. (or choose, if that suits you better.) 

1d12 Things to do in Your Moment of Death When All Hope is Lost.

1. Recite an impassioned plea to your god. Ask them to save your body or your soul. Ask them to ferry you to the afterlife. Ask for them to strike down your enemies.
2. One last merciless attack. Fire your weapon. Throw a spear. Swing your axe. It hits, of course. Hell, it crits. Whatever you hit dies, or stumbles, or bleeds, or something at least. Maybe you scar the daemon. Maybe you just impress it.
3. Use a forbidden art or spell. Call on hell itself to avenge you. Devour part of the world's soul for a last gasp of power. Turn back time, split the atom, possess a new body, become a lich. Any transgression is acceptable, given the alternative.
4. Intentionally misuse a powerful item. Release the monstrous soul bound in your sword. Drink every potion in your collection. Tear up an infernal contract. Cross the streams. Put a portable hole in a bag of holding. Why not?
5. Summon something unspeakably dangerous. Speak a name thrice. Call in an airstrike on your coordinates. Release the collar on your bound elemental.
6. Perform one last feat of strength or skill. Throw the lich's phylactery across the chasm to the cleric. Hold up the collapsing ceiling. Lift the portcullis, or just tear it apart. If the character could conceivably do it with a skill check, just assume they (critically) succeed.
7. Deliver a final speech or some last words. Denounce your killers. Give a wordless cry of defiance. Become a martyr. Maybe you'll get your last words tattooed on a bicep or two.
8. Reveal a deadly secret. Let the town square know who funded the bandits. Livetweet the nuclear launch codes. Speak the true name of a king, or a god.
9. Challenge the reaper for your soul. They'll probably demand a price if you lose, but it's not like there's anything worse than death, right?
10. Kill your psychopomp. Better hope it's something like a giant beetle or a horsebound warrior, and not your god showing up in person. If nothing takes your soul, maybe you can stick around for a while longer, at least until backup comes looking for a delivery receipt.
11. Hold on just a minute longer. You can't die yet. People are counting on you. Once you've held the line and saved the innocents, then you can rest.
12. Straight up refuse to die. Refuse to abandon your body. Force your soul back into a rapidly decaying meat suit. Eke out a few more days, weeks, months. Years. Anything.

Lethality Paradox Part 2: Death Moves

For part 2, I'm living up to my first post and shamelessly riding on the backs of more established authors. In this case, I'm riding on the back of Grim World from Boldly Games and their frankly excellent 'Death Moves.'

For those not in the know on Powered by the Apocalypse (and the original game Apocalypse World), a 'Move' is an action a player or GM makes when something occurs in the narrative. A basic 'Hack and Slash' attack Move in Dungeon World starts as "When you attack an enemy in melee," and then throws out how you roll dice and confirm successes.

By extension, a 'Death Move' is something that happens on a death, and the Grim World crew absolutely nailed it. A Skirmisher's last action is a spear throw that legends will speak of. A Necromancer's last breath unseals a relentless army of the undead. The death of a Battlemaster is merely the next step in a lifetime-long gambit.

While I'm singing Grim World's praises, they've also got Death Moves for other PbtA games like the base Dungeon World classes and Inverse World. Examples include Adrien Thoen's Fae pronouncing a bitter curse or perfect wish upon 'a land, a people, or an individual,' or the Golem of Inverse World having a 60 second countdown followed by a catastrophic core meltdown & explosion.

Maybe other systems call it something else, or it's considered a 'ruling' and not a 'rule' for most OSR players. Whatever. Let's use Death Moves a ton more in anything even vaguely resembling a heroic narrative. Your gritty funnels and Torchbearer cavern crawls can have PCs choking to death on their own blood, but if you're the chosen of an elder god, you get to go out in style.

Coming soon: 1d20 Things to do in Your Moment of Death When All Hope is Lost.
EDIT:  Find 1d12 Things to do in Your Moment of Death When All Hope is Lost HERE.

Build in the suggestions from the previous post to try and make a Death Move an active choice by the player. What if their last action undoes all the good they did up to that point? Is it worth rejecting a death saving throw (or equivalent) in order to use a Death Move? Mix carefully, and running out of HP might be viewed as a role-playing opportunity rather than an abrupt end to a promising character.

Lethality Paradox Part 1: A Worse Fate

How to approach character death is a universal problem seen by game designers the world over. The issue is usually thus:

1. I want to make death a constant and present threat so that players are cautious and deliberate.
2. I don't want to kill off characters my players are invested in and then have to spend minutes or hours making new characters instead of playing.

A 'solution' I have seen (and one I have used myself) is to make death SEEM constant and terrifying, but actually have it be rare and unlikely. This is a bad solution. It's not good. Don't do it. One day the players will see behind the curtain and their whole experience will be ruined.

Instead, I ask a simple question. Well, a few questions.

What is worse than death?

1. What, to a player, is more challenging than rolling a new character?

Roll up a table of hit locations. Hell, here's a simple one (thanks Nemesis!)

1 Left Leg    2 Right Leg    3-4 Left Arm    5-6 Right Arm    7-9 Torso    10 Head

When a player character (PC) runs out of hit points and would 'die,' instead roll a ten-sided die (1d10). You'll get a hit location. Hurt them there. Right arm? Break their sword. Torso? Tear open their backpack and smash all their potions & scrolls. Head? Take one of their eyes. Left leg? Chop it off at the knee. Pick something narrative-appropriate, and don't use it too often.

2. What, to the character, is more confronting than mere death?

This is, to me at least, the fun one. It's also got more potential to backfire, since it requires you (usually) to forgo a mechanical penalty in favour of a narrative one. In some cases, you might even give a mechanical bonus to a character who in traditional rules should be dead. Handle with care.

A holy man, fallen in battle. Their god abandons their spirit, and so a passing devil offers them a return to life. A proud shepherd of the forest, their wounds stitched by cold steel and factory-spun thread. A death curse that can't be dodged, but can be redirected onto a blood relative. Make your players (and by extension, their characters) choose a fate that, to them, may be worse than death.

Recommended Reading

I wouldn't be a real writer if I didn't try to piggyback off people more talented than me, so without further ado here are the real geniuses you should be checking out.

Against the Wicked City:
Joseph Manola
http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/

I can't put it any better than the author did: "Romantic clockpunk fantasy OSR gaming in a vaguely Central Asian setting. May feature killer robots." Full of excellent design principles, unique classes, creative rewrites of published settings, and a bunch of immediately usable setting material for The Great Road and the Wicked City. So good, I'm running it pretty much as-written as a campaign myself, and my (new) players are loving it.

Goblin Punch:
Arnold Kemp
http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/

Full of bizarre monsters, bizarre art, and creative worldbuilding, Goblin Punch is a must-visit for anyone keen on OSR gaming. At the very least, Microbiologist Azathoth or False Hydras will spark your imagination. At the best, you'll immediately fall in love with Centerra (as I did) and want to explore every inch of it.

False Machine:
Patrick Stuart
http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/

I'm going to be honest, this one got a recommendation based on team efforts with Scrap Princess over at Monster Manual Sewn From Pants. Specifically, the incredible source of terrified wondrous nightmares that is Veins of the Earth. If you feel like your players aren't having enough nightmares, check out their collaborative projects which also include Fire on the Velvet Horizon and Deep Carbon Observatory.

A Beginning

Welcome to Take Up Our Quarrel, an interactive multimedia experience dedicated to original RPG materials, unoriginal RPG materials, and the author's recommendations for you to read & support other writers instead.

The title of the blog is a reference to John McRae's 1915 poem In Flanders Fields, a reference that'll hold a lot more meaning to modern history enthusiasts that live in the former British Empire. How is it relevant to the theme of the blog? I'm not entirely sure.

...Well, that's a lie. My main interest has always been more OSR than Pathfinder, and the idea of generations being drawn to spill their blood by the grudges of the past they are haunted by? Very, very OSR.

Stick around for horror-themed musings, discussion of horror materials, and maybe an occasional post that's actually worth reading.