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.
