He's only mostly dead.

This variant is designed to simplify the resserection process by putting the resource into the hands of the players. This allows characters to only die when it is appropriate for the story rather than by the whims of dice. The results are something more akin to the Final Fantasy series of video games, where characters are merely knocked out during most encounters until they die in a meaninful story moment.

When using this variant, no ressurection spells of any kind are available.

Each character has a pool of Life Points (as set by the Dungeon Master). These points may be used at any time the character is dead, unless the DM says otherwise. Spending a life point takes two minutes, at the end of which the character is restored to -9 hp, concious but disabled and exhausted. These states can be recovered from as normal. The character is wherever his body was at the end of the two minutes.

Appropriate times for the use of Life Points are after a death in a meaningless battle, or an inconvenient death from a story perspective. Being stabbed by blades, shot by arrows and trampled by horses are all deaths easily waved away as "incomplete". Falling over cliffs, having the soul sucked from your body or being eaten by a large worm is less easily waved off, though it is possible. Being hurled into a pit of lava, sacrificed to a dark god, slain while single-handedly holding back an innumerable horde of darkness or jumping into the rapidly closing portal to the elemental plane of death are all story deaths that should not be recovered from.