Death and Dying

[Inner Circle Inc]

I'd be of the opinion that it would be to give a challenge to the game, for if your character were able to simply go through a dungeon hacking and slashing without ever getting hurt, then it would be akin to playing a video game on God Mode.  As for the Player, nothing sucks more than having a character you've had and built for a long time killed in an offhanded fashion, hence why most games involve some sort of a way to bring them back. . . sort of like extra lives in a video game, only not as instant.  The character is "out", but depending on the GM, that character could come back for the next scene without many long term injuries.  It seems from your implication that damage can either be statistical, an HP system, or dynamic, the effect system.  The advantage to the player would be that damage in a statistical sense simply gives him a limit as to how many times he can be hit, where as in a dynamic system it would give him something additional to roleplay off of. . . though this is simply a clarification, as I'm not entirely sure right now all the implications of one system over another from the player's perspective.  I'll have to think more in-depth on it, but my preliminary assessment is that Dynamic damage would have greater impact on dramatic flow of the game as those penalties will weaken or strengthen a character, however, with a statistical system , damage isn't always an abstract number, or at least a completely abstract number.  If weapon damage is liner *a great sword always deals the same amount of damage, meaning that it is the user's ability, not role of the dice, that gives greater or lesser damage with a weapon* then the number can inform the character which weapons he can be hit with and how many hits he can take.  While not a dramatic addition, this allows for tactical decision to be made on the fly *dagger is coming at me at the same time as a great sword, block the great sword and simply take damage from the dagger* or conversely allows interesting effects used through HP and AP loss *we have an ability which allows the druid to take damage in order to deliver an equal amount of damage to one person he's touching, and another that allows a mage to literally fling his allies into his foes, dealing damage to them equal to the total amount of his HP to them*.  In closing, to the player, a dynamic injury system would seem to affect his play ability, thus acting primarily in game, *If I get hit then I'll be unable to use that arm, however I'll be able then to activate this ability*  where as a statistical injury system would seem to affect his play time, thus acting primarily in the metagame *I'm going to die if I get hit, so I'll use many abilities early in battle.* Once again, not a definitive answer, and I apologize for that, but feel free to correct me if I'm missing the drift of your post or if you've got any other points you'd like to make.

Paul of Inner Circle

[Doctor Xero]

I ran a limited series once which involved player-characters solving the threat of being caught in an incrementally tightening recursion loop, in which time kept resetting itself a day earlier each iteration until it was about to reach zero time.

In that limited series, players knew that any character who died would come back in the next recursive iteration.

However, only those who lived to the end of a particular iteration were able to carry over into the next iteration the skills, abilities, experience growth, and magic items they had acquired during a particular iteration.  Anyone who died was rebooted fully in the next recursion as a beginning character with no memory of previous iterations nor any awareness of the time-reset threat facing the player-characters.  So players had definite rewards for keeping their player-characters alive to the end of a particular iteration.

(Only one player managed to survive all the iterations, and she proved to be quite impressive towards the end there, having maintained the abilities and skills earned through a number of different recursive iterations.)

Doctor Xero