D&D 5E How do I fake my character's death?

I want to remove my character from play for some time, and together with the DM we decided that he could be "apparently" dead.

This is not something that my PC will do voluntarily, so I have to create a situation where everyone else thinks I'm dead, but in reality I'm just somewhere else (like, I fell into a trap, and the villain has me prisoner).

This needs to happen during a session, I can't just up and disappear.

Now, DnD being what it is, with all the magic available to the other party members, or friendly NPCs, how can I really keep the appearance of being dead?

If my companions don't find my body, they will start trying to divinate my location with magic. We have a high-level Cleric, who could be using Divine Intervention when everything else fails.

Any suggestion is welcome, but possibly I would like to keep it "by the book" (no excessive homebriew).

One idea I had was that, after disappearing (for example, a tunnel collapses on me, and the villain "rescues" me) the villain could put me in a cell contained in an antimagic field. I suppose that would stop any sort of magical divination?

thanks in advance for the help!

Is it you are taking a break from the group, or maybe want to play a new character for a while?

I would have you seemingly trapped in the astral plane and you have been stranded in another world, presumably your friends are not high enough level to get you out. The villain has you there for whatever motive, but it would allow your DM to send you to literally anywhere or any other game. You could be stuck in OD&D Greyhawk, trapped in the world chronicled in Call Of Cthulhu living life in the 1920s, maybe on Gamma World, or whatever your DM finds cool. Then when it is time to get you out, the whole group would have to wind up transposed to the other game system and maybe you are in thrall to the dark ones of cthulhu or suffering from amnesia in the wild west world of Boot Hill. They have to rescue you, everyone plays a crazy adventure and then you all return and it is back to business as usual. It would take some work, but it would be cool. (and I saw this exact story in an old issue of The Avengers when Hawkeye The Marksman found himself stranded in the old west).

Comic books offer a lot of good stories to rip off. Have a Medusa turn you to stone, but in reality your soul is living in any other world or genre of the DMs choosing The party has to protect your stone body til they can figure out how to make you flesh again. That happened in another comic where the hero wound up stuck in the 12th century crusades.


Or, have the villain Magic Jar you and when you return you won't even be the real you.

The easiest way for this to happen would be in a cut scene by the DM. Depending on your character, if the PCs need to withdraw from an unwinnable fight, you might stay behind to cover the retreat (possibly to trigger a spell or trap that would block escape). You may be grappled by a creature and fall off a high cliff (into a magical portal at the bottom). A fight over a lava pit may have a creature push you over the edge (past the illusionary lava).

If the players know you are leaving (assuming that's the reason), then they will likely accept any death as being a way to getting rid of your character. If it's a surprise, then you'll have to act angry/frustrated, unless you died via. self-sacrifice.

KenNYC said:

Is it you are taking a break from the group, or maybe want to play a new character for a while?

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Taking a break, but I definitely want to go back to play this character in the future. DM is fine with it, and we want to give the other players this "OMG, I thought he was dead!" moment when I come back.

KenNYC said:

I would have you seemingly trapped in the astral plane and you have been stranded in another world, presumably your friends are not high enough level to get you out. The villain has you there for whatever motive, but it would allow your DM to send you to literally anywhere or any other game. You could be stuck in OD&D Greyhawk, trapped in the world chronicled in Call Of Cthulhu living life in the 1920s, maybe on Gamma World, or whatever your DM finds cool. Then when it is time to get you out, the whole group would have to wind up transposed to the other game system and maybe you are in thrall to the dark ones of cthulhu or suffering from amnesia in the wild west world of Boot Hill. They have to rescue you, everyone plays a crazy adventure and then you all return and it is back to business as usual. It would take some work, but it would be cool. (and I saw this exact story in an old issue of The Avengers when Hawkeye The Marksman found himself stranded in the old west).

Or, have the villain Magic Jar you and when you return you won't even be the real you.

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Wouldn't a cleric with Divination or Commune realize the truth? I need something that makes me divination-proof.

Shiroiken said:

The easiest way for this to happen would be in a cut scene by the DM.

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We don't want to do a cut-scene, because it will immediately tip the others on the fact that it might not be real.

Shiroiken said:

Depending on your character, if the PCs need to withdraw from an unwinnable fight, you might stay behind to cover the retreat (possibly to trigger a spell or trap that would block escape). You may be grappled by a creature and fall off a high cliff (into a magical portal at the bottom). A fight over a lava pit may have a creature push you over the edge (past the illusionary lava).

If the players know you are leaving (assuming that's the reason), then they will likely accept any death as being a way to getting rid of your character. If it's a surprise, then you'll have to act angry/frustrated, unless you died via. self-sacrifice.

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I like the idea of the illusory lava. Maybe even better, it could be real lava. But the bad guy has an efreeti ready for me in the lava, when I drop into the lava I'll probably go to 0 hp in one raound, and the efreeti could planeshift me and him somewhere else. Then put me in an antimagic cell.

Still not sure if this would stop magic investigation through gods and Divine Intervention.

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Delazar78 said:

Still not sure if this would stop magic investigation through gods and Divine Intervention.

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If your death is convincing enough, they shouldn't feel the need to investigate. But they might try to get you rezzed. Lava is useful for that, though, since it will mean they can't get the body.

I like the medusa idea. Better if the PCs see the statue get hit with a disintegrate ray to make it appear to be destroyed. The trick is that the statue was swapped with another, so even if the dust is hit with a resurrection spell, only the decoy farmer will be brought back to life. A minor problem is that my players would question why the medusa would waste a spell targeting a statue and not one of the other PCs trying to kill it. There may be some sort of distance or railroading if everyone is captured or something.

Another way is to actually kill him and have his 'twin' brother come and take his place to avenge him. Soap opera's have the best stories about coming back from the dead.

Do what soap operas do: write their dramatic death scene, and don't worry about how to bring them back until the episode in which it actually occurs.

In part this depend on how powerful the gods are in your world, and how your DM runs them. Even Commune is typically only yes, no or unclear. Gods in my campaign are not omnipotent in part because otherwise players will always try to ask 20 questions to bypass any kind of mystery.

But there's another option. What if it's the god of the cleric that takes you for some reason? Again, depends on campaign but could there be a "special mission" he needed you for, perhaps some hidden past secret?

Another option is to simply kill your character in such a way that no remains are available to the rest of the party (lava/cave-in/eaten by a purple worm that then runs away) there are any number of possibilities. But, for whatever reason the BBEG finds your remains and resurrects you. Perhaps they didn't even mean to, it was just a case of mistaken identity. Or a high level cleric finds your remains and just takes pity on you. Maybe he's been hunting that purple worm and finally finds it's hidden lair and a pile of bones.

Or it just happens. Your PC doesn't even know why, just one day they woke up. Perhaps the gods for whatever reason send you back because you have unfinished business or you win a hand of poker against Thor or whatever makes sense.

People come back from the dead in fiction all the time, with magic there's plenty of ways of doing it.