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

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I just tell them to go home and get their shinebox.

 

[SteveC]

We seem to have this conversation every now and then... I sort of feel like I'm in the WABAC machine.

I keep any game I run at the same XP totals for everyone, and level them when it's appropriate. If a character dies, the player re-creates one at the same level and gets the outfitted with comparable gear to the rest of the group. That session, I have them run some of the monsters and help me with the game to keep them interested in what's going on. Sometimes the player just jumps right into building a new character and it's fine for them, but otherwise I want to keep them involved and having a good time.

I've said it before: gaming time for me and for all of my friends is precious. We have marriages, jobs, and many of us have kids, so getting together is something that means we're not doing something else that frankly we should be doing. I'm not 18 where I was playing D&D four times a week anymore.

I wouldn't inflict "start over" on anyone, and I wouldn't expect it myself. To paraphrase Unforgiven, it's a heck of a thing killing a character. You take away everything he has and everything he ever will have. That's the consequence of losing a character.

I'm all about a DM having their own way of handling the game, I've played in many games where the DM had houserules longer than the game's actual rules, but one of the few things I'd ever walk away from would be a table where you start over. I would rather just miss a session for each level my character lost rather than play.

Man that sounds like I'm saying "my way or the highway," as I'm writing this, so let me just add this: this is just my opinion, and any way that works for you and your group ... works. The original poster was looking for advice, so that's mine.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

5E seems to be the easiest to bring characters back to life. Revivify is 3rd level, so you're bringing the dead back as soon as 5th level on a cleric for 300gp. And given the lack of default magic marts, everyone should be able to throw 300gp in the resurrection pool pretty early in the campaign. Gentle repose is 1st level, so even if no one in the party can cast revivify yet, so long as you preserve the body within a minute, you have 10 days to round up 300gp and a 5th level cleric.

Our parties normally have an NPC henchman or two, so if someone's character bites it, they can play one of them until the dead PC goes through the D&D revolving door afterlife.

If someone wants to add a new PC, I'd let them start at the same level, but no magical gear unless we were really high level.

 

[Sunseeker]

What do you guys do with dead pc's? I'm the DM for our 5E game right now.

I expel them from D&D! I burn their books, smash their dice and tattoo a giant letter "A" on their forehead! /kidding

I just let them reroll.

My players die a lot. They just frankly go through spells of rolling really badly and spells where tactics are things other people use.

After the early levels, my players are pretty stout. Killing lots of players at low levels really isn't fun for me and it's just time consuming for my players.

The player of the fighter just died last night. Now the group has no fighter. The player started to roll up and level up a character to match the level of the rest of the group(who had gained a level) so he lost his character so ended up coming back with a higher level character.

Since our group levels at the speed of plot, not by XP totals, new characters (and new players) get to join the party in full current-level glory.

Having a high level character meant you had some skills as a player (otherwise you wouldn't have gotten so high). With our current way of doing things just doing nothing but charging every single fight and if you die make up another character just as experienced or maybe even better will work.

I don't even believe this is true with MMOs, the idea that you must have no idea how to play your class unless you've actually played it up to X level. I've had enough players who still don't know which die to roll at level 8 for an attack than they did at level 1.

On the other hand, it sure is nice to be able to just get passed a small speed bump and keep playing with our current set up.

That's pretty much how I feel about it. My only caveat is that you're not allowed to make a clone.

 

[DaveDash]

Lose all XP for that level, you cannot make a clone.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Man, you guys are lenient.

My DM's have been pretty rough when a PC dies. I remember this one group, we had this character, Black Leaf...

 

[DaveDash]

Man, you guys are lenient.

My DM's have been pretty rough when a PC dies. I remember this one group, we had this character, Black Leaf...

Gaming psychology has changed over the years to focus on positive reinforcement as opposed to penalties.

We used to be pretty harsh back in the day too.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Gaming psychology has changed over the years to focus on positive reinforcement as opposed to penalties.

We used to be pretty harsh back in the day too.

.....umm....?

 

[DaveDash]

.....umm....?

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.

 

[iserith]

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.