D&D 5E What to do when Pc's die? What then for that player?

[DaveDash]

D&D has a problem with iteration time, that is, the amount of time a player spends trying to get back into play after his character buys the farm. There are some ways the game handles it by default, mostly in the form of resurrection or healing magic, but sometimes this isn't enough. Therefore, I ask the players to decide how they want to handle it on a campaign-to-campaign basis with my only request being that, whatever they choose, it must get the player back into the game as quickly as possible. I do not want players to be put out of play for any longer than they want to be. This ain't Monopoly.

Generally, it ends up being that players create backup characters that they want to play should their primary character die. We're sure to work in "trap doors" in the fiction that introduce these characters prior to them ever being needed so that when it's time for them to come into play the transition is quick and smooth.

Yeah around the next corner is a prisoner shackled to the wall....

The plus side of things in 5e (with the exception of spells) it can be pretty quick to make a character. They also don't need all their magical gear straight away to be useful.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

No joke.

Look at MMO's for example, a lot of them went from being extremely harsh with death penalties (Everquest - lose all your gear and everything and you have to recover it) to basically making death no more than a speed bump, because getting you leveled up and accessing the "cool" content of course is far more addictive than a difficult grind to the top.

D&D is no exception, there are very few penalties now because that's considered bad game design.

Some people don't enjoy that of course, so the last couple of years we've seen a rebirth of "traditional" old school RPGs that are harsh like they used to be.

No, he meant you missed the reference to Blackleaf (from the Chick tract where the girl kills herself because her thief dies). If you played D&D in the 80's, particularly in the south, you doubtless got some kind of talking too from a crazy aunt, scout master or other concerned citizen.

Though amusingly I got almost all my D&D books at our church garage sales!

 

[DaveDash]

No, he meant you missed the reference to Blackleaf (from the Chick tract where the girl kills herself because her thief dies). If you played D&D in the 80's, particularly in the south, you doubtless got some kind of talking too from a crazy aunt, scout master or other concerned citizen.

Though amusingly I got almost all my D&D books at our church garage sales!

Yup, I completely missed that reference.

 

[ad_hoc]

I don't see starting again at lower level as a penalty.

I want to actually play out the character's experiences. It's hard enough for me to identify with high level characters.

If my character started at high level I wouldn't care about them at all.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I think the general practice of starting new PCs at level 1, which kind of worked in 1e and 2e, got savaged by the tighter (and I'd say overdesigned) balance of 3e and 4e. It would probably work much better in 5e than it did in either of its two preceding editions. That said, I still probably wouldn't make a player start at lower than 3rd level. Those first 2 levels, as jrowland pointed out, will just be speed bumps at best.

It could kinda sortof worked in 1e/2e where the XP tables were close to exponential. Thus a PC could very quickly trailing the other PCs by only a level.

I do not know what the 5e XP charts look like off the top of my head but I still have two other big problems with the start small approach:
(1) It sucks as roleplaying that the, say, 9th level PCs would consider giving a share of XP and treasure to someone helpless as a kitten. But if they do not give both XP AND treasure, then this PC is simply doomed.
(2) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Especially for front line PCs, being 2 or 3 levels behind is a tremendous ding to your survival chances. If this Player brings back another Fighter, he is going to hide in the back for a long time. And juuuusssst as he begins to contribute in the manner everyone wants the PC to excel, he will probably die and need a new replacement.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yup, I completely missed that reference.

Dangnab kids these days with their dragonborns and their action economies and their draconic kobolds.

No sense of heritage! Ignorant of tradition! I bet they don't even understand the danger posed by gazebos!

 

[miniaturehoarder]

Build the character at 3rd level, but start with 0XP. The character can level as XP accrues during short rests until within 3 levels of the rest of the party at which point XP is distributed at end of session as normal for my game.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

And juuuusssst as he begins to contribute in the manner everyone wants the PC to excel, he will probably die and need a new replacement.

Revivify, Raise Dead and Resurrection and other effects are in the system for this reason.

 

[Sunseeker]

Revivify, Raise Dead and Resurrection and other effects are in the system for this reason.

Seems like a waste of resources. For that kind of resource cost, couldn't you simply hire someone awesome? Then we could just say the person we hired is the player we just brought in? I mean if you're going to drop 300gp every other combat or so to rescue the doof until he becomes awesome, why not put that money to better use?

I don't see starting again at lower level as a penalty.

I want to actually play out the character's experiences. It's hard enough for me to identify with high level characters.

If my character started at high level I wouldn't care about them at all.

I don't really understand the disconnect I suppose, but to my, there's nothing inherently changing about my character. To keep games clean (or if they become dirty to keep them from being weird) my characters are always 20+ for humans and whatever 'adult' age is for non-humans. So they've already got a history, especially if they're one of the long-lives races. Sure I gain powers, skills and new abilities as I level in the game, but that's not particularly relevant to who my character is (there is some relation, but it is tangential). If I make a high-level character, I just write a longer backstory (mine are usually 3-5 pages to begin with so imagine how my DM feels).

Yeah around the next corner is a prisoner shackled to the wall....

I ran an open campaign for the last 3 months. I introduced a new character, sometimes multiple ones, almost EVERY GAME. So yeah, if it wasn't for this trope I don't know what I'd do.

The plus side of things in 5e (with the exception of spells) it can be pretty quick to make a character. They also don't need all their magical gear straight away to be useful.

It's "faster" yes, but faster is a relative term. I've found that a complete D&D noob takes half to a whole hour to create a character. Experienced players can slap a character together in 10 minutes regardless of level, which I'd say if probably quicker than any edition after AD&D.

 

[SirAntoine]

Let the player make a new character at one level lower than the average level in the group.