D&D General PC Death: How do You Handle It?

"So, my question is this, how do you handle PCs dying? Do you prevent PCs from dying?, do you have them come back as ghosts? Or does something else happen when PCs are on the brink of death?"

So, prior to game, I lay out and we discuss "Desth: Before, During and After"

This covers the basics for these things in the setting.

Before is vital cuz there I lay out things that will and wont kill PCs. Will unusually hinges on deliberate choices. Wont always hinges on die rolls or bad luvk.

During and after covers the other stuff - rezz, afterlife etc

For my last 3.5 game every PC death was profound and gsme changing. Thrir aftrlife scenes lead yo chsnges sftrr thrycrezzed and the setting had in itself lotsa different forces at play alongside the subjects of those who have returned. So every rezz created not only internal character chsnges but also added more external aspects to plot as well.

In my current 5e gsme, no deaths yet per se among PCs but a lot of storyline aspects have already tested a big chunk of what those events will launch.

So, death is a major step, a major change and major story point but not anything as blah as end of the story for that character.

My philosophy is, never point your DM gun at something unless you’re willing to pull the trigger. If PC death is on the table, then when a PC dies, they’re dead. No fudging rolls, no extra chances, no rescuing them, they’re dead. To do otherwise weakens the tension posed by the threat of PC death. If you don’t want to kill off PCs, that’s fine. Just make it clear ahead of time that PC death won’t be on the table so that everyone knows what to expect out of the game. I’m actually running my current campaign with death off the table. When PCs die they are out of play until they can be healed, and when they return they have some kind of lingering flaw, but they can always come back unless the player wants to change characters. I’ve also run plenty of games where PC death is a possibility, and when it is, I don’t pull punches. When your character dies, they’re dead. Just depends on the campaign.

Lots of good responses in this thread. Communication is key. No two tables or campaigns are alike.

Ultimately, for me, it comes down to this:

- I don't think dice have a sense of fun,
- I generally find that game designers know only slightly more about game design than they do about my specific campaign, which is to say, nothing, and
- While I think I'm pretty good at encounter design after 30 years, I'm not so confident that I feel justified in forcing players to eat the consequences of my choices with finality.

No one at my table who fails three death saves gets off scot free, but I back off the scythe and cowl unless the party was being reckless. I used to think PC death was mandatory for verisimilitude, but in my old age I've decided there are better ways to make player failure interesting without negating player effort. I've come to think of PCs as active components of campaign design. Removing one often does more harm than good.

Good is here defined as "teaching responsibility" and "giving weight to consequences;" things that neither I nor my players seem to be terribly concerned about these days.

This is mostly my approach to it. I’ll be generous in giving people every chance to save themselves (or someone else). The exception to this is with those big end-of-the-campaign fights. When it comes down to Strahd, Demogorgon, Tiamat, and the like, I would be doing the PCs and the campaign a disservice if I didn’t give them the business.

My last session ended with the PCs fleeing a vampire and his minions. They’re all down to single digits. They’ve made the vampire very angry. Next session could easily begin with all of them getting slaughtered. There's a chance they can actually win this fight, but it's a slim one. But it would be more interesting for all of us if they got captured and taken back to the lands of the undead.

77IM said:

I talk a big game about TPKs looming evilly over the party... but, when it comes time to actually kill a character, I'm a big softy. I don't fudge rolls or anything; I just interpret the situation and the rules in the way that most favors the PCs. Like, I find myself getting lenient about things like action economy and carrying capacity and who is aware of what.

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The rule at my table is that PCs can die, but a character isn't permadead unless the player wants them to be. If the player wants to keep playing the character, I'll find a way to make it happen.

This prevents my players from treating their characters with even more extreme overcaution than they otherwise would. They already avoid dangerous situations and refuse to touch any objects with anything but mage hand if they can help it. If they feared losing characters permanently, it would be even worse.

We handle it variously depending on the campaign and the situation and how we feel about our characters.

In a 5e campaign, I lost two characters and everyone else lost one. This all happened at low levels so we didn't have the resources to raise dead. They were gone gone gone.

In an earlier 3.5 campaign, when there was a TPK we didn't want to give up our characters and their story, and the PCs were all dying but not dead at the end of the fight, so the DM declared that we survived. Not just "nevermind, you're fine" - there was an explanation and it became part of our story.

In Shadowrun, a player is allowed to sacrifice a stat point to declare their dead character "mostly dead". I think we've taken advantage of that about half the time in our campaigns.

Around here it's known going in that the game is inevitably at some point(s) going to make the PCs miserable, with death being but one means of achieving such.

Like [MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION] above, though, I'll bend the reality simulator a bit in order to get a replacement PC in if needed: if someone fails a resurrection roll, or if the corpse cannot be recovered, or if the PC and-or party are simply too poor to afford to pay for a raise, or if the player says "screw it, gimme the roll-up book".

Once in a while, if I realize that a perma-death was due to my own mess-up (it happens, believe me!) then I might find - or fudge - a way to have that PC show up again at some point.

I run the game as a neutral arbiter as well. A character who dies is dead, unless the party can find a way to bring them back. I'm don't aggressively try to kill PCs, but I won't be merciful if the dice fall that way.

In my current campaigns, I think I've killed two characters from my more experienced group in about 30 sessions. The other group is all newbies to 5e, and I attribute their lack of deaths to a combination of factors. Part of it is that I do softball the encounter design for them, as I won't usually put extremely dangerous encounters in their potential paths, the way I do with the other group. The other part is that the newbies are much more cautious and likely to parley with a monster if they aren't confident they can safely defeat it.

We've also sometimes used a divine intervention rule at the table. A character has a small chance (usually a percentage chance equal to their level) of having a supernatural entity intercede on their behalf. Particularly pious characters get a bonus to the roll. The thing is, even in the case of pious characters there's no guarantee that your deity is the one that intercedes (generally the DM rolls for it, with a low roll indicating a malevolent entity and a high roll being a benevolent one - typically the PC's deity). Usually, but not always, there is a deal to be made or service rendered in exchange for a second chance. Admittedly, I've always liked that rule. It's rare that it triggers, but more often than not it's at the most dramatic moment possible.

The issue I've always grappled with relating to death is gear. Typically the party either divies up the gear (which results in the new guy being behind par) or they give it to the new guy (which can be weird from an RP perspective, and might not be all that beneficial if the new guy is suited for an entirely different role.

In 3e, due to the heavy dependence on gear, I came up with the idea that stealing from deceased compatriots was considered unlucky and taboo. Items that were shared by the group (quest items and unclaimed items) were fair game, but there was no cheesing the system by declaring all items to be communal. Exchanging items was acceptable, as long as the item being traded to the deceased was of equal or greater value.

That allowed the new character to come in with appropriate gear without disrupting party balance. It's the best way I've come up with thus far, but it has heavy worldbuilding implications so it's far from ideal.

I allow the dice to be what they are. This does mean that a little goblin can one shot a 20th level character with a critical hit and a roll of 100% for a decapitation. Of course the players can do this to my wonderful, kind, good, honest, cookie baking, children loving villains too.

Most critical hit deal 2x-5x damage and with my house rules a player even at first level can survive 5x damage unless they have a very low constitution/health attribute.

This allows for a plethora of close calls before death comes calling. This is when my brave players run away like Sir Robin.

I have the reputation as a Killer DM, and I'll admit I really love it! While I (almost*) never deliberately attempt to murder PCs, I let the dice fall where they may. Additionally, I don't design "encounters," but rather logical areas that enemies would inhabit. This makes the "kick in the door" style of play somewhat hazardous, and makes information extremely valuable. Running away or negotiating with unnecessary opponents are generally considered by my players.


*There are three exceptions to this. The most common is when a player is leaving the game and wants their character to go out with a bang. The next are RP consequences, where the players make enemies of the powerful (e.g. murder-hobos) and the consequences are harsh. Finally, I had a "friend" who was massively cheating (giving his character lots of extra abilities), and I didn't want to confront him about it yet (because I was young and stupid) so I "solved" the problem by putting the character in a no win scenario (player eventually quit when confronted with his cheating).