StoneHell and the power of losing your helm

With my Thursday group I played my first session of Dungeon Crawl Classic with Vincent Quigley as our new dungeon referee.

We rolled up our group of level 0 adventurers and we had a great session venturing into the StoneHell valley.

We had 16 characters, only 5 character died, I was expecting the funnel to be more deadly. But we scouted the valley and we dint really venture into the dungeon itself. Exploring the dungeon would clearly had produced a deadlier and greater funnel. But still, the funnel worked and I already have 3 favorite characters: A clever 1hp merchant, a crafty dwarf mushroom farmer and a clumsy squire.

Vincent house ruled that we could sacrifice our character helm to avoid taking damage from one incoming attack (3 characters started with a helm). This saved the life of two characters. I found the house rule colorful and very interesting, it remembered me of the warrior special ability in Stars Without Number.

I am tempted to also use this house rule in my LotFP campaign. But tweaked a little bit.

Like: once by session you can sacrifice a major piece of equipment to avoid the damage from a killing attack.

You can sacrifice:

• A piece of armor: Helm, shield or 2AC worth of plate armor.
• Your main weapon, but it need to be a large weapon.
• Your holy symbol if you are a cleric.
• Your spell book if you are a magic user. (you can "re-write" it but you lose d3 random spells!)
• A medium sized magic item.

But you are also stun for d3 round (maybe a saving throw can let you avoid the stun).

EDIT: well I am still thinking this over.