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Originally Posted by Oneiros
There is? Where is this rule?
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ITL 10, "Death" and "Immediate Action". The sentence that leads Death
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"A figure dies when its ST is reduced below 0, by wounds or by any other means."
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is promptly countered by the second paragraph
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However, death is not quite as final on Cidri as it is on Earth. There are several ways that a dead figure may be brought back to life.
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So, death-below-0 isn't an instant and irrevocable state, as the word "death" tends to imply. Immediate Action goes on to list mundane actions like First Aid as reversing the condition, so we're not yet talking about magical healing or resurrection for the "brought back to life" bit. "Reduced to 0 ST or less" might be better termed as "unconscious" or "out of action" or some such less ultimate term than "death".
The Immediate Action section repeatedly refers to bringing a character back to ST 0 or above to save them from death. ("Heroic Magic Revival" says that you have an hour to revive an ST <= 0 character before "death" becomes final to the extent of needing a Greater Wish or Revival to reverse.) So, it's clear that ST < 0 is survivable, and also that ST can go negative from injury by multiple points. That is, the loss doesn't stop at 0 or at -1, as in some games. And the Melee rule of instantly dying at -1 is superseded by the ITL rules, or there's be no point in mentioning multiple points of healing from First Aid, potions, etc. (Recall that the OP only has Melee, but not yet ITL, which is what raised the question in the first place.)
So there's four conditions described by RAW; let's call them Active, Out of Action, Dying, and Dead. If you want to include the one day time limit for Revival in a formal enumeration of conditions, then it's Active, Out of Action, Dying, Mostly Dead, and All Dead. In Melee, Out of Action occurs at exactly and only ST 0. St -1 skips Dying and goes straight to Dead. ITL introduces the state I'm calling Dying, though RAW just says "dead", which word unfortunately also refers to Dead/Mostly Dead/All Dead. (TFT predates the desire for obsession over precisely worded rules to be literally interpreted that reached its pinnacle in D&D 3e.)
The houserule I suggested, for those that find the RAW overly lethal even considering Immediate Action, is simply to lower the threshold for converting death-reversible-by-Immediate-Action to death-requiring-Revival from 0 to some lower number. If that threshold were -ST (say), then it becomes very much harder to kill someone, though it's just as easy to put them out of action. So, Out of Action is no longer exactly and only ST 0, but ST <= 0 and > threshold. Dying becomes ST < threshold, not ST < 0.
There would just be a much wider range where the character was out of action, yet still healable and not going to die after the Immediate Action hour has elapsed. They still have to be gotten to ST 1 to return to being active. Healing by time alone is going to be two days for each point of ST below 0, so they could be out for a quite a while with no aid. (Particularly not good if you have no friends to care for you, but are lying out in the wilderness, but on the other hand not particularly threatening if your party members survive or you otherwise have care, say from your new captors.)
If your intent is truly murderous, you can't rest content just because a figure goes down at ST 0. You probably need to hit them once or twice more to make sure they go down to -ST, not just -1, so that they will die without Immediate Action.
In a purely tactical game, it's not really a distinction worth tracking (which is why Melee doesn't bother). ST 0 is a "mission kill" regardless, and the victors can go kill all their enemies in the Immediate Action period if they're so inclined. It's only in a more RPG style of game where players have some investment in their character and you care about their continuity that you might want such a rule to improve survivability. The ITL RAW gives characters a much better chance to survive than Melee. But if you want even more resilience than the standard Immediate Action rules, then a lower threshold is an option.