D&D 5E Character Death

[MostlyDm]

I'm curious how other people handle PC death, and what general opinions are. I don't much care for polls; I'm more interested in a conversation.

Here's how I handle it.

First of all, I play with a lot of kids, people unfamiliar with RPGs, and parents who haven't played much in 10+ years. So, a lot of people who aren't super familiar with D&D. I also play some games with a core of hardened grognards.


One house rule I've begun implementing for the groups of new players is, for lack of a better term, Death Flags. In Session Zero I ask each player how they feel about their character dying. Is that something that they recognize is a natural, reasonable possibility? Are they okay with it? Will losing their character before they feel like the character's "story" has been told be something that is really frustrating and un-fun?


If so, I flag them as unkillable. Here's the thing... I think that failure should always be an option. I prefer running unleveled open worlds without encounter zones or tailored adventures. I don't have any interest in fudging at the table, either. None of this probably sounds consistent with having unkillable PCs.


So what happens is simple: If they're going to die, they still die, in game mechanics terms anyway. They make death saves, they stop making them if they get three failures, etc.

But, for the people flagged as unkillable, three failed death saves isn't the end of their story, even if they are too low level to have ready access to resurrection magic. Perhaps I will provide an alternate means of resurrection, that leaves them in the pocket of whoever resurrected them. Perhaps they simply didn't die, and groggily regain consciousness, badly injured, some time later.

Whatever the outcome, it will be based on the situation surrounding their "death" and it will come with some sort of long-term drawback.

In practice, there are two groups I have used this system with. In a party of 5 PCs, only 2 have opted to be unkillable. In a party of 6, we have an even 50/50 split. In both cases, the kids who decided they don't want to be able to die also specifically said they might change their mind later, but they want to get a feel for the character first.

So far, I've had one unkillable character "die," a level 1 rogue who ate a 5d8 thunder damage shatter type effect off a magic item when they were taking on a buffed up Veteran and his guards. 5d8, con save for half, is a tough pill to swallow as a level 1, CON 10 rogue with 8 HP. Died outright, no death saves.

Instead of dying, she's suffered some permanent hearing loss, imposing disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely solely upon hearing. I let her know that I might give her advantage on saves against magic that explicitly requires the target hear the caster, though, such as vicious mockery or suggestion. Assuming she's a decent distance away in the middle of a fight, anyway... someone using suggestion at point blank range during a social scene, probably not.

This policy seems to be working out really well so far. So much so that I might start offering it as an option for my grognards, though I suspect their initial reaction will be to scoff.

If you made it this far, thanks! So, how about you guys? Do you let the chips fall where they may? Do you fudge to save PCs in certain circumstances?

 

[waxtransient]

I also did this with one of my parties.

In my case, I intentionally asked each one in private, so the rest of the party didn't know who had the flags. The players were fine with the arrangement, but there were no deaths during that campaign. They were also pretty casual players; I also suspect that many grognards would scoff at the arrangement.

 

[Draegn]

I tell every one of my players that anything that might happen in the real world, that is either seen on television or read about in the paper can happen in the game. Whether or not it happens depends on if they go out looking for it or place themselves in a particular situation.

 

[cmad1977]

I like AngryGMs method and am using it now.
Short version: death saves are strictly private rolls. When someone checks on the person making their death saves I ask
'Are you alive?'
I don't care if the player missed all 3 saves and lies to me. Character death is on them.

As yet I haven't been in that situation yet and there are situations where death is just gonna happen(falling into lava) but I like that the decision is the characters.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Dualazi]

I've taken the opposite approach to what many have listed so far. The actual mechanics of dying are the same as listed in the book, but once you're dead, you're dead. No resurrection magic outside of Wish/True Resurrection, period. I found that people take threats more seriously, which might just be a factor of my table. What I really like about it though (aside from making the world more sensible to me personally) is that it reinforces the notion of a player driven storyline, in that their group could well become one more pile of bones outside the big bad's castle. It takes away some of assurance that they'll see level 20, or see the end of the campaign's story, and anecdotally makes them less likely to have complex backstories they want resolved, and focus more on their shared feats and accomplishments as a result of their interactions (good and bad) with the world.

Plus it's amusing to have their current characters reminisce 'round the tavern about the various unfortunate ends met by prior members of their wayward band.

 

[MostlyDm]

Those are interesting approaches, thanks for sharing!

Personally, I actually like that my method is very open about it, and even for the unkillable "death" comes with potentially serious consequences. I think that provides a better framework to acclimate people with the idea that failure is always on the table, and their fate is not always in their hands, while still allowing them to continue playing a cherished character.

Keeping that element hidden from the table seems like it would just result in people typically not dying, consequence free. I guess the key thing to me is: I don't mind if you don't want your character to die, but I do kind of mind if you don't want your character to fail.

Although all that said... I guess I never look closely at any of my players' rolls, so if they were fudging their death saves (or any other roll) I wouldn't know. It would be kind of lame, I suppose, but I'm not going to police it. If they can only have fun by "rolling" 15+ every time, that's on them.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My games are always more "story first" than "game first", so death is usually not likely of an outcome. It CAN happen, but usually it's because dramatically and story-wise it makes sense. As I don't see "death" as the "#1 cool result" of PC failure... I don't use it as such. If PCs fail at something, there are a myriad of ways for that to happen... death certainly being one of them, but not #1 of them.

So my PCs won't usually find themselves getting cacked by a wandering monster just because a player rolled horribly during that encounter. More often than not... something else would occur instead, one that was more appropriate to the story the PCs were currently involved in. Now of course I say "usually", because as always, perhaps story-wise the death might make sense (and usually it is lower-level PCs for whom the vagaries of death are more likely to catch them.) So there's no hard and fast rules for me here. I don't write them down at the start of a campaign, and I don't hand rules to my players saying "Here's where you could die, here's where you most certainly wouldn't..." etc. etc. etc.

I've been acting and directing improvisation for more than 20 years, so for me my instincts are always "Be in the moment" and "React truthfully". And thus I don't personally need to spell out my rules, because the truth of a scene will come out based upon who the characters are that are involved, what they are doing, what they want, and what helps to "Yes, And" the scene and the game going forward. If that means a PC dies on that third failed death save? Okay. If that means something else more dramatic or interesting for the scene and game happens? That's okay too. And it's really those rules that my players know and accept as my way of doing things. And those that don't like it? They don't tend to continue playing in my games and find their enjoyment elsewhere. Which I am wholeheartedly in favor of... my improv and theater communities in the 'burbs of Boston tends to find potential players being pulled out of the woodwork all the time, so I'm never at a shortage (a privilege I never look in the mouth.)

 

[MostlyDm]

I've taken the opposite approach to what many have listed so far. The actual mechanics of dying are the same as listed in the book, but once you're dead, you're dead. No resurrection magic outside of Wish/True Resurrection, period. I found that people take threats more seriously, which might just be a factor of my table. What I really like about it though (aside from making the world more sensible to me personally) is that it reinforces the notion of a player driven storyline, in that their group could well become one more pile of bones outside the big bad's castle. It takes away some of assurance that they'll see level 20, or see the end of the campaign's story, and anecdotally makes them less likely to have complex backstories they want resolved, and focus more on their shared feats and accomplishments as a result of their interactions (good and bad) with the world.

Plus it's amusing to have their current characters reminisce 'round the tavern about the various unfortunate ends met by prior members of their wayward band.

Yeah, my group of long-term players are in a low-magic world with no resurrection (most D&D magic doesn't even exist), which has typically been my preference for games in the past.

I think even in a setting like that, I might allow this option going forward though. You "die" and lose an arm but wake up on a chirurgeon's table.

 

[Waterbizkit]

I never pull punches when it comes to character deaths. If a band of adventurers wants to put their lives on the line for gold, glory or simply the greater good I'm all for it, but it does mean their lives are actually at risk. I don't go out of my way to make things harder on my players and their characters, but I don't make it any easier.

If it's a characters fate to be stabbed to death in an alley by some nameless mugger because they tried to intervene when said mugger was rolling a drunk, so be it. Not everyone gets to die the heroes death fighting against the big bad villain, some of them get killed by nameless mook #216 in a random encounter and that's how their story ends... assuming no resurrection is possible for whatever reason. Some people may see this sort of thing a "game first, story second" kind of outlook, but I don't. Having lofty goals and good intentions isn't enough to save you from an inglorious demise in my games and to me that's still telling the story, just maybe not the one we were all expecting.

As I said though, I don't make bringing a character back to life any more difficult than usual, not in most of my games, so once characters make it through the first handful of levels things become significantly easier if they don't want to their characters to stay dead. If there's any one thing I might do to be a little rough on the players it's this: if it makes sense at the time, enemies will attack downed PCs. This means an automatic critical which means two automatically failed death saves, which can be pretty brutal under most circumstances. But it needs to make sense to me at the time, if the enemy is better served moving on to deal with the remaining active PCs that's what happens.

Anyway, characters die in my games when they put their lives at risk, no punches pulled. That's the long and short of it.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

My group are cool with player character death so long as it isn't too likely to happen as random occurrence of dice.

So the by-the-book rules for death in 5th edition are acceptable to us, and we use them unaltered.

Though we do slightly alter the 5th edition rules on returning to life, as we have a house-rule to treat all expensive and expended material components as if they were normal material components - so if the party knows a spell to bring a character back to life, there is never a "do we have enough diamonds?" check to potentially fail.

That said, I should also mention that I don't use death as the only consequence of failure. I make sure that scenarios make sense, so while a hungry wild beast might be trying to kill and cart off a single creature, it won't try to kill the entire party, and while undead are likely mindless and aiming to kill, hobgoblins often want to take prisoners, and so on.

Edit: Oh, and we never fudge die rolls under any circumstances other than if I've decided to have players roll randomly to fill out a treasure they've just found (players rolling to save time, and keep them feeling engaged, rather than me taking longer to do it all myself on the spot while they feel they are in non-game mode) - but that's not really fudging since I say "Hmm, no, that result doesn't make sense here" or "That's not worth what you just went through to get it" and telling them plainly to roll again.