1 - The player was out of line demanding the raise dead;
2 - the player was understandably ticked about dying the way he did. There is a way to kill a player and a way
not to, and that was the way not to kill a player.
IMO, neither the player nor the DM handled this appropriately and now some hard feelings and bitterness appear to have resulted.
Before we even get to the "How to Cancel Death" discussion, it’s important to have the "How to Make em Dead" discussion. Because you don't get to the former without passing through the later.
In general, to be a successful DM and run a game that has some integrity while at the same time is both enjoyable for the players and the DM alike (this IS supposed to be fun, remember?) you need to exercise some discretion when putting your players into life and death situations.
There are three categories of player deaths in the game:
fair,
unjust and
borderline.
"Fair" deaths include:
- player elects to foolishly fight in a situation where roleplaying, guile or simply running away were plainly and obviously called for;
- provoking a plainly and obviously far more powerful NPC who is known to be evil or otherwise predisposed to summarily killing the rude (lich baiting is stupid);
- dying in a heroic fight against the boss monster who is appropriately designed in power level vs. the party;
- sacrificing life to save a party member, important NPC or other quest goal;
- killing the player via angry villagers or powerful NPCs when the player has decided to oppress the innocent, cause mayhem or otherwise acted in a flagrantly evil, chaotic or oppressive fashion (in a primarily good campaign);
- killing the player with a trap when the presence of the trap is or ought to be plainly known and the lethal nature of the threat it presented was obvious and avoidable; and,
- when the PC is otherwise engaged in plainly stupid play and you have telegraphed a potentially dangerous result or otherwise warned the PC of the consequences of this sort of reckless behavior before recently ( or this time specifically) (The RPG version of the Darwin Awards).
There are other instances of course, but the point of it is that "fair" deaths maintain the integrity of the game and tend not to provoke the response that you got from your player in this case.
"Unjust" deaths include:
- death from an unavoidable fight with plainly overpowering creatures;
- death from an unavoidable trap which was plainly unfair;
- death during an ignominious activity by random result;
- death at the hands of a powerful NPC who did not present himself/herself/itself in a way to demonstrate appropriately that danger was present;
- other deaths resulting from non-heroic activity
"Borderline" Deaths include:
- Any of the above examples, changed in a way so as to make the Just Death seem more unjust - or the plainly unjust death seem a little more palatable, but still difficult to determine, either way.
In this case, you violated 2 rules. You killed a player during an ignominious and mundane non-heroic activity and you did it by a random die result. I presume, moreover, that the chasm was not unavoidable and there was a quest goal on the other side of the river - in which case you put him in a case where he
had to overcome a lethal trap which was inappropriate to his class and level.
When you engage in this sort of death dealing, you should expect a surly result ("only one character per session", indeed ) and other recriminations and displeasure ("you should have raised me").
When a player
expects to be raised from death, what he really is asking for is:
1) unreasonable; and,
2) possibly understandable, as he feels that the death was unjust and non-heroic.
In every case that is a question of fact. And in this case, it was an unjust and non-heroic death.
Raise Dead
Every DM deals with this differently and it is very much a matter of style and group dynamics.
I have a simple rule:
There is no raise dead - there is no resurrection - there is no wish - nothing at all which can EVER bring a character back from the dead.
When the players understand this to be a hard and fast rule that will not under any circumstances be broken for PCs and NPCs alike, they tend to take it in stride and understand that death is a final result in your campaign.
The problem is - if you make this rule a feature of your campaign, you had better pay close attention to player death and make sure that the only deaths which occur are "fair", "just" and "heroic" deaths.
If you try to implement this rule without doing so, you are just asking for injured feelings and a campaign that people don't like to play in because it’s not
fun.
And seeing as this is a game, it does not get much more fundamental than that, does it? When it's not fun, in the overall sense of the term, you aren't doing your job correctly and all of you would be better off doing something else.
When you pay appropriate attention to the manner in which player death can occur, the problem of raise dead goes away.
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**Sometimes, even when you do what you should, you can still get the "you killed it you keep it" response and a player balls up his character and throws it at you. (This actually happened 23 yrs ago during a session - it is still an
infamous incident in my gaming circle.)
When that happens, you have found a player you don't need in your gaming circle. Explain the problem after emotions have cooled and if they ever do it again, send him or her on their merry way. That’s a player you can all do without.
