There are a few mods on Nexus that attempt to tackle the death mechanic and instead of reloading a save you continue forward with penatlies.

I'd like to keep the machanics as simple as possible.

The player is reduced to zero ( or close to zero health ) and is knocked unconscious.

The player wakes up at the closest temple or possibly inn.

The player has been looted of a % of his or her gold ( configurable )

The gold is lost forever

The player is also looted of his or her equipped weapon

The weapon is gone forever

Would anyone be willing to take a shot at this? I assume the most complicated part would be scripting where the PC spawns after being knocked out.

Reloading a save just KILLS immersion. Also without a penatly for death, the player has less incentive to win the fight ( at least subconsciously . It would be amazing if a modder could pull this off.

Unfortunately my modding talents are limited to simple ideas.

I might give this a go if nobody else wants to pick it up. As i was reading your post all I had going through my head was "Doable...take some work but doable...doable...doable...heck, i've invested this much thought now I might as well try and do it"

- Hypno

Thanks for your response and THANK YOU for the attempt.

I would also like to suggest a hardcoe mode where if you die, it deletes all the saves of the character except one maybe that upon loading would show the stats and accomplishments of the character in his life. If this is possible that would be awesome.

I've just written out the script, haven't tested it yet, still need to do the ck side of the set up. In theory this is what should happen:

First of all it sets the player as essential. This means that now the player will behave the same as a vanilla follower in that they don't die, instead they fall to their knees in pain. When this event happens, the screen will fade to black, your gold and weapon get taken, your health gets restored by 50 points, a forced fast travel happens to the tavern in the main city of whatever hold you are in, then the screen fades back in.

At some points in the game it would be a bad idea for this to happen, the main example that jumps immediately to mind is when you're in Sovengarde. To account for this, whenever a "change location event" occurs (when you go through a load door) the script quickly checks if the cell you are now in is a child of one of the nine major holds. If it is not, then the essential flag gets toggled off and you go back to vanilla death. When you return to skyrim it will get toggled back on

I don't own any of the DLC, so am unable to cover solsteim. With the above check, it means the mod can work regardless of whether you have Dragonborn or not, but if you do its only for the main land. When I eventually do get them I'll update the script

I'm available to test whenever you are ready.

Is it difficult to make various options configurable? i.e. gold amount taken? mainhand weapon taken?

Another idea would be to makae the character suffer a near death debuff that would last for an extended period of time ( reduced stamina, health, magicka )

Great minds think alike mate. I had an MCM config menu in mind from the beginning. In the code, I've got the option to toggle on/off both the weapon and the gold penalty. Also the percentage of the gold taken can be changed as well. Lastly I've got it set up so that when your sword gets taken, it doesn't just get deleted, but goes into a temp storage chest. To avoid save bloat, whenever the player dies again, the old weapon gets deleted out of the chest before the new weapon is taken. This is so that I'll have a "retrieve last lost weapon" button in the config menu. Personally I'm only going to use it when I return to the scene of my defeat, kill the guys, then RP that I'm retrieving my weapon from their corpse

EDIT: Now writing that makes me wonder. How hard would it be to get the NPC who struck the fatal blow, in order to equip them with your stolen weapon as if they took it from you as a trophy...That would be an interesting, immersive addition...hmmm...would have to have a check that it was an NPC, wouldn't make sense a wolf nicking your axe...hmmm...

- Hypno

I've seen other death mods, but I would consider using this one.

If you don't mind, I'd like to request some more specific features.

Gold Lost On Death Mult = Base + total gold * Percent

with two separate sliders for base and percent

And the option to revive at the location you died instead of at a temple.

With a period of invincibility and reduced stats.

Just because I'd be worried about breaking certain quests if I was just teleported out.

Feel free to bug me if you want help with anything.

I love the idea better than any mods like this I last saw

But if its a wild beast (or a dwemer construct, or a dragon, or anything without opposable thumbs) you shouldn't lose gold -do dragons love gold in TES lore ?-

I don't know what penalties would be good for this case, there should always be heavy penalties for death... Diseases and such are not a worry in a world you can cure anything by casting a spell or drinking a giant's toe mixed with a butterfly wing.

Love the idea of the NPC taking your equipped weapon

This is great!

I think the key is making everything configurable. I personally would like to have the option of the mainhand weapon being taken permanently but thats just my take.

I really think a ton of people will use this if is simple, concise, and configrable.

Do you actually have a script working for respawning at the closest inn?

That would be pretty neat! Especially if you have a daedric sword with some nasty enchantments on it. A taste of your own medicine if you will.

All good ideas there. That's why I love the MCM menu, so much potential! I was wondering what options you think I should offer for the "Base" amount. A slider for the Percent is good, but for the Base that could go up to a thousand or two so it would make the slider a bit fiddly. Might be a better idea to offer a list of set options for the Base figure instead. Thoughts?



Glad your excited. Yeh, that's why i'm sticking the "retrieve last weapon" button in the MCM menu. It's up to you the player to restrict yourself from pressing it, its your choice.

Yes the script is working for the most part. I ran into a bug with the papyrus function "Game.FastTravel()", but was able to substitute it with the "MoveTo()" function. Only problem with that is that time doesn't get put forward to account for the travel. If I can I'll try and script the time to push forward by a flat amount (maybe 5 hours). It's a shame, if that function worked it would've been perfect


It's still a pipe dream at the moment. Haven't even looked into how to retrieve the NPC that killed you, so am unsure how feasible an idea it is yet. One step at a time...

- Hypno

Force the weapon into an alias and add it to the alias container of Boss of that zone?

That gives an incentive to go back and get revenge (and your weapon (and stuff) back).

I think you should lose everything of value! Armor, enchanted items, etc.

Gives a RP incentive to not carry around large sums of money or items you should be stashing in a safe place!

I think what you lose should be configurable, that's what Hypno is going for, isn't it ?

Do draugrs have any interests in looting adventurer ? Falmer certainly yes, they are like goblins, keeping precious stuff hidden in their caves. Giants don't care for the dwarves they stump on. Etc

Sounds plausible to me, I'm liking the sound of this idea even more now we're brainstorming it out. It will need a backup plan for where your stuff goes if you died in an area without a boss. Thoughts?

Yep, configurability is the name of the game!

I'm thinking of having three toggles under the title "Lost Equipment":

1. Equipped Weapon
2. Equipped Armour
3. Entire Inventory

The first two toggles will be independent of each other. If you toggle the third option on, then it won't matter if the other two are toggled off, everything's getting nicked

Regarding what happens if your enemy wasn't something that would usually steel stuff: I think this will fall into the same category as what happens if you weren't in an encounter zone. I haven't thought of a back up plan just yet, but rest assured there will be one


Keep the ideas coming people. It is still early in the mods development so this is the best time for them to have a chance of being implemented

EDIT: I just realised I can use the system I've already set up (the temp storage chest) as the back up plan. So when you die, the script will check if there's a boss container in the area. If it finds one, then it will dump your stuff in there (its up to you to get your stuff back before the cell resets). If it doesn't then it will place your items in the temp storage chest, so you need to press the button to get your stuff back (remember the chest gets emptied everytime you fall in battle). I think that then will cover all situations , so there is no need for me to figure out a way of retrieving the type on NPC that dealt you the death blow.

- Hypno

Why not put the looted items into a sack, placed at your point of death? You could even spawn a guard of the appropriate variety, (bandit for bandit, creature for creature etc. just by finding the nearest enemy, not your specific killer, and seeing what type they are) so you have to fight to get your stuff back.

If there was a boss, no doubt they'd take it all (and divvy it up later) but if there isn't a boss, it'd make sense for it to just be where you died, with your killer.

Actually, I'm assuming human enemies there. Why would a draugr boss collect your stuff? Especially important to consider when there's a dungeon with both bandits and draugr, like Bleak Falls. If you just add your stuff to the boss chest, it's entirely unplausible.

Food for thought.

Well what I'm thinking is as follows:

There will be conditions on my alias for the boss chest so that it will only fill if the boss of the area is of the appropriate type (bandit, forsworn, necromancer, etc).

When you die, the script will attempt to fill the alias. If it does fill then great, your stuff will be in the boss chest. But if it doesn't fill, then the script will dump your stuff in my temp chest, retrievable by pressing the button. It's up to you when you press it. Personally I'll only press it if I return to place of my defeat and RP that I took it from their cold, dead fingers.

I'de rather avoid placing things into the game world as much as possible to steer clear from any potential cause of bloat. I'm happy to place stuff in a chest in an encounter zone because the game will clear it up after the cell resets. I know that I can track it an then clean up after myself, but you never know, on the off chance the mod might lose track of the sack.

Two motto's I try my hardest to keep when modding:

"Better safe then sorry" & "K.I.S.S."

- Hypno

I don't think there are any major issues with high resolution sliders since you can always do minor adjustments with the wasd keys.

Would it be possible to make the Base variable depending on the character's level? A 5th level char is likely to have a lot less gold than a 20th level character. Like 50*Lvl or 100*Lvl or something?

that's probably a good idea.

So just to make sure we're all on the same wavelength:

GoldToTake = ((lvl * Base) + TotalGold) * Percent

With both "Base" and "Percent" being configurable in the MCM. Sound good?

Also any ideas for how much the Base slider should go up to now that we're multiplying it by the players level?

- Hypno

Well, in vanilla a trip to a city and a night's sleep would cost 30-60 gold, so maybe 30 per level? Might get high quickly, but that'd make dying matter more. That'd be my choice, so make the slider go up to 100 or so?

If you don't have the money, I assume you just lose what you've got, and still appear as normal in the temple? Rather than dying for good, that is.

I would prefer:

GoldToTake = TotalGold * Percent + Base * Lvl

I want it to be possible, to lose all my money if I just don't have a lot.

edit: sorry lvl shouldn't multiply everything, just the base.

That would be weird if higher level meant higher percent gold loss.

Ah, now that makes more sense. I was just about to post that what you wrote before made the Lvl a bit too influential and the Base a bit too insignificant. The way you've written it now sounds perfect.

This has been a really productive bit of discussion, thanks to everybody involved. I've got a lot to ponder. I'll get to work once I get home from my prison sentence...um...I mean...day job

- Hypno

I would prefer for an option for the item to not be retrievable.

Also, an idea. Upon waking up you could maybe have a hunter greet the player stating that you were found unconscious in the wilds or in a dungeon.

The idea to be able to lose all your gold at a low level is great. Im not good at math, if the character has 100k gold at level 40, how much would you stand to lose upon death?