Characters have a new characteristic called Luck Points. Every character starts out with 3 luck points and gains 3 more each time he or she levels. Once used, a luck point is gone forever. Players do keep track of their luck points from session to session.
Players may use their luck points at any time during the adventure, regardless of whether it is their turn to act or not. Luck points can be used to alter any die roll to suit a player. For example, a character could use a luck point to change a missed attack roll to a natural 20. Similarly, a luck point could be used to maximize damage or succeed at an Ability or Proficiency check.
Luck points can also be used to alter other individual's rolls, but only when those rolls are directly related to the player. For example, a player could expend a luck point to change his opponent's attack roll to a 1, but he or she could not change someone's Ability roll to jump a chasm - even if they were jumping the chasm to get to the player! Or the player could expend a Luck Point to alter a Strength check for another player lifting him out of a pit, but a Luck Point could not be used to alter another player's attack roll if that other player was attacking the same enemy you're attacking.
Luck points also cannot be used for meta-gaming rolls, i.e., rolls outside of the normal actions of the character. For example, a luck point could not alter a DM's roll on a treasure table or a random encounter chart.
For multi-class characters, Luck Points will be acquired each time either class levels. However, it will be averaged across levels. So, for example, with two classes, leveling in one class would give 1 Luck Point and leveling in the other class would give 2. If multi-classing across three classes, then leveling in each would give 1 Luck Point. When getting a non-equal number of Luck Points per class, the player should designate at character creation which class will get how many points, though it must always be averaged as closely as possible, i.e., a character with two classes must designate which of his classes gets 2 Luck Points and which gives 1, but he cannot designate one of the classes to give 3 Luck Points and the other to give none.
In 2nd Edition, priests of a specific mythoi may have alternate primary characteristics for their class. In these cases, bonus spells and change of spell failure will be based off of the alternate primary characteristic, rather than Wisdom.
Characters do not die at 0 hp. Instead, they go unconscious at 0 hp and continue to bleed each round, losing 1 hp per round. When the character reach -10 hp, the character is then dead.
If any other character aids the dying character, they may stop the blood loss. This requies an attack-equivalent action. The dying character will then be stabilized at however many hit points he had when aided. He will recover 1 hp per turn until he reaches 1 hp and is once again conscious.
If a magical cure of some sort is used on the character, then he or she will immediately be restored to 1 hp and become consious - but no higher than 1 hp, without further restorative magic. A Heal spell will, however, restore all hit points as per the spell's description.
The spells raise dead and resurrection are not used in this campaign. No divine spellcaster may select either of these as part of his or her prepared spells. The only magic that may bring a character back from the dead are the spells miracle and wish. When brought back to life with such magic, a character suffers no penalities (e.g., level loss).
Because such powerful magic is not commonly accessible, a new game mechanic is introduced to handle character death. When an event occurs that causes the death of a character, a player may instead "avoid" the death. Doing so puts the character at -9 hit points (stabilized) and causes an immediate level loss. In essence, the character was lucky. The character has not avoided the situation that would have lead to his death, but he was able to prevent himself from dying. A character who would have died from the last attack of his enemy, for example, has not avoided being hit, but was able to roll with the blow in such a fashion that he still took damage but was not slain.
The character is not, however, able to completely avoid the effects of the near-death experience. The physical and emotional trauma that such an exeperience causes expresses itself, in game terms, through two effects: First, the character is immediately reduced to -9 hit points, though he is stabilized and therefore will not bleed to death. Second, the character immediately loses a number of experience points sufficient to bring him to half-way of the prior level. As a result of the experience point loss, the character loses his current level and all abilities and benefits that go with it (e.g., spells, hit points, skill points, attribute bonus, etc.). This level loss cannot be reversed by any magical means, including spells such as restoration and wish. If a character is 1st level, then he or she loses one point of Constitution instead. As with the level loss, this loss is permanent and cannot be regained through any magical means (though this doesn't prohibit a character raising his Constitution score in the future using magic).
There are three situations under which this option may not be used: First, the DM may rule that a character cannot avoid the death. This is for those circumstances where there is no reasonable possibility of escaping death. This should be rare, though, and only in extreme circumstances. Second, this option may not be used if the character is at negative hit points. Note that this includes times when a character has "avoided" death, but something else slays him while he is still unconscious. Third, the player may opt not to take advantage of this, instead letting the character die.
Finally, note that this is a game mechanic and not a role-playing option. The character has not opted to avoid death, the player has. From the character's perspective, he or she has just gotten lucky. As a consequence, this option is not available to NPC's.
The house rule that raise dead and resurrection spells are not available has been a standing rule of mine for many years and in many campaigns. This is due partially to the impact such spells would have on a world (consider what a world would be like when people - at least those of wealth - can simply be raised from the dead), and partially for role-playing reasons (the characters encounter an NPC that, for story reasons, I want to die, but the players simply carry the corpse to a high-level priest). Or, even in the latter case, if we assume that a deity will only raise those it deems worthy, why would the god always raise the PC's? To build a more logical and consistent world, it has always seemed to me that these spells should be excluded.
PC's do die, however, and I have been unwilling to hold to the position that if one's character dies, just roll up another. A player (hopefully) invests time and emotion into his or her character and they will naturally be unhappy if that character is gone simply because of a bad die roll. My solution in prior campaigns has been to resolve the demise of the character through some form of role-playing, either a quest on the part of his campanions or some spiritual experience on the part of the character. And in my prior campaigns, this has been adequate.
This has proved to be impractical in this campaign, however, for two reasons: First, there appears to be a great deal more character death in this campaign than in prior campaigns. Second, resolving a character death through some other mechanism involving role-playing requires more time and effort than I am willing to put into it at the moment. I required some way to allow players to bring back dead characters without introducing a mechanism that would introduce further inconsistencies into the game world, such as that created by the prohibited spells.
Non-humans do not suffer level limits for any class they are permitted to enter.
In addition to his other gifts, the mentor of a 1st level mage will always give his student a Pourch of Material Components. This item will provide the spell-caster with any material component he requires less than 25 gp in value. This magical item, if lost, can easily be replaced with a 1st level spell, "Create Magical Pouch", which will create such an item. Only spell-casters may use such a pouch, to all others it will appear to be a non-magical leather pouch.
This item is intended to simplify management of common, less expensive material components only. Any attempt to abuse this to make money or to produce more expensive material componets or for some other purpose than originally intended will cause the DM to further limit its useful or remove the item altogether.