Respawn Penalty

Summary

Respawn Penalty is a server-side Fabric mod for Minecraft 1.21.8 that adds persistent death penalties to discourage reckless gameplay and repeated suicide-respawn abuse.

Players who repeatedly die within a short time window receive escalating penalties such as reduced max health, reduced food level, Weakness, Slowness, Mining Fatigue, and temporary sleep-recovery locks. The system is designed to increase survival tension without creating permanent death spirals.

The mod includes persistent multiplayer-safe UUID tracking, server restart persistence using Minecraft PersistentState, passive recovery over time, and anti-exploit behavior that prevents players from instantly resetting penalties through repeated sleep cycles.

Penalty System

When a non-creative, non-spectator player dies and respawns:

| Death streak | Max health | Food | Effects | Sleep recovery lock |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | 15 | 9 | Weakness 30s, Slowness 10s, Darkness 3s | none |
| 2 | 14 | 8 | Weakness 45s, Slowness 15s, Darkness 4s | none |
| 3 | 12 | 7 | Weakness II 60s, Slowness 20s, Mining Fatigue 20s, Darkness 5s | none |
| 4-5 | 10 | 6 | Weakness II 75s, Slowness 25s, Mining Fatigue 30s, Darkness 6s | 5 minutes |
| 6+ | 10 | 6 | Weakness II 90s, Slowness II 30s, Mining Fatigue 40s, Darkness 8s | 10 minutes |

Death streak increases only when deaths happen within 10 minutes.

Penalties cap at 10 max health and 6 food to avoid permanent death spirals.

Recovery

A player recovers when either condition happens:

• Successfully sleeps while sleep recovery is not locked
• Survives online for 20 minutes

Repeated intentional deaths temporarily lock sleep recovery:

| Streak | Lock duration |
|---|---|
| 4-5 | 5 minutes |
| 6+ | 10 minutes |

Survival recovery still works during the lock period.

This prevents:

die -> sleep -> reset -> die

abuse loops without permanently trapping players.

Recovery restores:

• Original max-health base value
• Normal recovery state
• Cleared penalty effects

Anti-Exploit Guarantees

• Respawn cannot fully restore normal health/food

• Logout/relog keeps active penalty state

• Server restart preserves:

  • death streak
  • active penalties
  • recovery lock

• Multiplayer state is isolated per UUID

• Creative and spectator players are ignored

• Penalty persistence survives crashes and restarts through world PersistentState

Note: Death streak only increases if deaths happen within the configured streak window.