Death, Dying, and the Hulkamaniac Rule

My house rules for death and dying in D&D are buried in a post about my house rules for my Carcosa campaign. That was the first time I used them, but they continue to be what I use when playing D&D-a-likes:

If your hit points drop below or are equal to zero make a Save vs. Death Ray and Poison: success indicates your character is merely unconscious, completely incapacitated until they can get a full week of rest; failure indicates your character is oh-so dead. If you roll a natural 20 on your saving throw roll, your character not only survives, but is invigorated by his near death. In this case your character re-rolls their HP for the session—the “hulkamaniac” rule.

This is easily generalized for any system with saves and hit points. Mothership and DCC RPG have similar rules for death and dying.

I normally re-roll hit points per session, something I picked up from Brendan. (I would say this is an atypical reading of how OD&D explains hit dice, but one I am a fan of—poor rolls for your HP seem less punishing. Carcosa did something similar and more bananas with HP/HD as well for that matter, but I ignored those rules.) If this isn’t how you play, I would return people who roll a natural 20 on their save back to the game with their max HP.

If you want to also include the possibility of permanent scars and dismemberment I would make a table keyed on how much you made your death save by. But I don’t usually play with those sorts of tables. I prefer the simplicity of you’re dead or you’re not.

Sucks Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) turned out to be such a dick.