Fates worse than death

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Probably true unfortunately, but man that's creepy. Of course that was presumably the intention.

Living in an abandoned lab, unable to speak, incapable of any physical sensation other than the continuous pain of poor nerve-machine connections, surrounded by the formaldehyde preserved remains of most of your body, and subsisting on rats... no, that's probably not the most nurturing conditions for a child.

The scientist himself did not survive long after the operation (hence the abandoned state of the lab).

[Evil Roy Slade]

I'm the only one who's read Zelazny's short story, "Go Starless in the Night," huh?

[YankeeGamer]

To a superhero, reputation is everything. Well, one PC in my old Marvel Superheroes Campaign (The one by TSR, with Ultimate Powers included and FEAT rolls, to date things) was a real Klutz. He'd catch the bad guys, but leave a mess.

He eventually got a new super"hero" nickname, among the PC's and later the newspaper: Collateral Damage Man"

[Varyon]

In the DF setting I’ve been working on, the dungeon has a corruptive influence on delvers, which is passively fairly slow but delvers can purposefully draw on it (in place of FP for extra effort and abilities, and in place of food/water/sleep), which speeds things up markedly. Spending too long in (or drawing too much power from) the dungeon first makes you less willing to leave, then makes you more inclined to actively draw power (ramping up the rate of corruption), then actually makes you dependent on the dungeon’s power (leaving weakens you and slowly does damage until the corruption drops below a certain threshold, you return, or you die). Terminal corruption renders you comatose, and if you aren’t removed soon one of three fates await you. The first is simply death (I haven’t decided if resurrection exists in the setting - if it does, it won’t work on such a character). The second is being turned into a lobotomized breeder for monsters (monsters can’t breed with each other, but can with humans, where the offspring are all-monster). The final, and rarest, is to be reborn as a demon (a term for a human who has been turned into a monster, looking like a fusion of monster and human). Demons retain their memories and skills but not their attachments, and are utterly loyal to the dungeon, making them extremely dangerous. Players whose characters suffer terminal corruption are given the choice between death and life for their characters. Those who choose the latter make a roll to determine if their character becomes a breeder or a demon, but in either case they’ll need to make a new one (demons are NPC antagonists). I expect most players to choose death.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Extrarius

Affliction(
Disadvantages: Blindness, Deafness, Numb, No Sense of Smell/Taste, Low Pain Threshold;
Negated Advantages: Vibration Sense, Radar, Imaging Radar, Ladar, Para-Radar, Sonar, High Pain Threshold;
Incapacitation: Agony
)

I call it senseless agony (the person is trapped in agony without any senses).

This probably is the objectively worst thing that someone can come up with, at least on a physical scale. It lacks the descriptive punch of a situation though, and doesn't cause a sympathetic flinch. It also doesn't interact with the mind: is it better to have short periods of hope that can be crushed?

A lot can be done by giving someone regenerative immortality and then inflicting the same punishment again and again. Dumping them into a fire and burying them in a sarcophagus with something that eats human flesh are both things that can happen to such beings. As are some of the greek mythology punishments listed earlier.

If you have a setting with souls, destruction or damage to the soul can be a fate worse than death. The monster didn't just kill them, they destroyed their soul as well.

I'd say that destroying someone's mind is a fate worse than death, but then I ask myself if I really want to leave instructions telling people to kill me if I get senile. Perhaps we can dodge that issue by saying its more painful for those around you.

And asking "To whom?" is a great question when thinking about fates worse than death. Yourself in that situation? Yourself before that situation? Just those around you?

[AlexanderHowl]

The destruction of free will is more terrifying than the destruction of the mind. Using an affliction to permanently give someone immortality and Slave Mentality would be rather horrific. Another would be to give them a spiritual body without anyway to interact with the material world.