Death Penalties: Maybe Con only?

[Red Ropes]

Could the penalties with deal maybe be scaled back to a con penalty only to make you very vulnerable and unlikely to go back at it for a small amount of time? While the lack of the str pen is great, the mental penalties are gruesome and annoying - spellbook casters have to reset their business, the AB penalties don't really do much, significant, but not the end of the world.

Magi are completely ruined my death, physical based people are not. An equivocal, nasty con pen would inconvenience and disincentivize pvp ping-pong nicely, imo, without taking away someone's ability to get around town.

[Ebonstar]

con penalties only would do nothing to casters who dont rely on con to begin with

having played a caster, resetting your upper tier spells is minor compared to the trudging at 3 str that used to happen

afterall death is supposed to hurt not be a walk in the park

[Nitro]

con penalties only would do nothing to casters who dont rely on con to begin with

What? Being reduced to 3-6 CON on a low HP class is a death sentence if they try to enter PvP again. That's 1-shot territory for most other classes.

[One Two Three Five]

I'd say change the death penalties as follows:

Damage and AB loss
Caster Level and Spell DC loss (Is the latter possible?)
AC decrease
Con loss

Cancels out the benefits of strength, dex, and being a caster, without having to blast your int down to 10 or whatever.

[Drakkenstien]

There's ways to save and update your spellbook, isn't there? Saying it "completely ruins magi" is an overstatement, having played a magi who died... a lot. It's an annoyance, at best. Death is supposed to be painful, and not just a minor inconvenience.

Because, it's... you know, death.

[-XXX-]

Spellbook casters have still access to summons which don't suffer any penalties whatsoever. So in a sense, a wizard can respawn and immediately pop that water elemental out of his pokeball before running off to the nearest endgame dungeon right away. Melee classes could be struggling with that.