D&D General Have you ever chosen not to accept resurrection?

[Fauchard1520]

What it says on that tin. Have you ever had a PC death so heroic that resurrection would have been an anticlimax? What were the circumstance? Why did you decided not to accept the rez, and was retiring the character the right call in retrospect?

Comic for illustrative purposes.

 

[Rabbitbait]

I must be a harsh DM, but in the 39 years I have run campaigns I have never ever, not once had a player get an opportunity to resurrect their PC. There have been plenty of deaths (usually 2-3 per campaign) and 1 TPK, but in almost every occassion they were either too low level, or too busy running away.

 

[Tom B1]

I have a friend who won't accept resurrection or raise dead or reincarnation. His logic goes "A Ming vase dropped, shattered, and crazy glued together is not the same vase."

Character creation is fun, character arcs should matter, and when you die, it should matter and be a good conclusion. Never let random encounters kill major PCs.

I had a spy character in Eberron I was retiring so I could fill the lack of a cleric on the team. DM asked if he could use him for a dark fate in a coming adventure - the scenario featured a spy from the same agency so he did. Ended up he was taken and turned into a Vampire that killed the replacement character I made... lol. It was a great fate for my retired PC.

 

[Leatherhead]

I have a friend who won't accept resurrection or raise dead or reincarnation. His logic goes "A Ming vase dropped, shattered, and crazy glued together is not the same vase."

That guy needs to learn about Kintsugi

As for the thread topic, can't say I have. Though there was that one time our Paladin of Thor got assassinated and we debated if it was an "honorable death by combat." In the end we kind of needed him to clear our names, (the party was framed for killing him) and he decided he could die another day.

 

[Lanefan]

As both DM (other people's characters) and player (my own characters) I've had characters decline revival, but almost never due to their death being particularly heroic.

I can't really speak to my players' reasons for declining*, but for my own characters it's usually one of three things:

The character, in character, has had enough and just wants to rest in peace
The player at the table (me) realizes this character's not going anywhere, so time to try something new
The character knows s/he doesn't have the resources to afford revival (it's expensive in our games) and refuses to go into debt

Most of the time I'm happy with my call after the fact. (note: your use of the term "retiring" is confusing; to us a retired character is one that is still alive but for whatever reason no longer being played)

* - except one: the character, a Necromancer, actively wanted to find out all about what it meant to be dead; and what happened thereafter. So, he declined revival when first offered; then a few weeks later accepted it when offered again. He was thunderously disappointed to realize that the revived have little-to-no memory of what happened to them while dead.......

 

[DWChancellor]

Once.

The PC was a (otherwise) silent Barbarian who sung Opera when he raged. They looted a viking funeral barge and he was knocked unconscious by a treasure mimic. The PCs had slain (burned) the (undead) occupant so when the valkyries arrived to take the boat to Valhalla the PC's dying body was accidentally taken.

Endless fighting and mead? Yes sir! He refused resurrection. I swear I didn't plan any of this; random tables and improve for the win!

 

[akr71]

Soon to be once.

I'm leaving a campaign I've been playing in for over 3 years and in our last session my character got disintegrated. It wasn't on purpose by the DM because it was a direct result of my actions and I wasn't playing in a particularly suicidal fashion. Our wizard just went down and I had an opportunity to take the opposing caster out of the combat. Unfortunately, that meant my character getting next to the lich and using the Cube of Force to prevent spells from leaving the 15' cube I just locked it in. The party goes crazy, "Clutch move!" and such to which I reply "Yes well, I just locked myself in a 15' cube with a lich."

The party swept up my remains, intending on restoring my character somehow - Wish or True Resurrection maybe - but those are beyond our reach at the moment and the survivors still have a phylactery to deal with. While it was unexpected, I'm pretty content with the result and it certainly makes exiting the campaign easier.

 

[Blue]

While far from the norm, I've refused resurrection (or told the players not to try it) several times. In each case it was either a heroic sacrifice or because the character had achieved what I wanted to achieve with them and I was good to retire them and make a new character (though not looking to retire them, just if it came up organically).

An example of a heroic sacrifice was back in AD&D 2nd, when my Elven F/Mu was fighting a legendary orcish hero who was a scourge of the elven nation and was losing. He broke his Staff of the Magi and the retributive strike (back then it would do a large number of d6 per charge left) took out the orcish hero and himself.

Oh, and I had one character kill themselves off-screen when a campaign morphed into a "you're now slave agents with magic implanted they can make explode", and the character wouldn't have done it. So the character refused to help the slavers and was blown up.

 

[Mister-Kent]

Resurrection is for the weak! REINCARNATE me baby, roll on that TABLE

Seriously though, I haven't had the opportunity for PC resurrection yet. I think I would accept it if I get to play the UA Revenant option - my PC is back but there's a defined endgame now.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Most recently in a Ravenloft game. Because of the wonky way it works, and the extra conditions you have to have, my acolyte fighter refused when he died. It would have violated his ethos to accept the conditions.

 

[Undrave]

It wasn't heroic, some Deep Gnomes had blinded us and wanted to throw us back out the underground. My druid turned into a porcupine. Bad idea it turn out.

But I was bored with the character so I let the old boy rest.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Yes. But not because of a heroic death. Had a monk PC in a 1E campaign where resurrection magic was readily available. He died. Actually he died LOT. Always raised. Eventually he got close to reaching his maximum allowed # of deaths. The DM generously extended that limit - and eventually he got close to that too. Of course each raise/resurrection had to be paid for. He did. And then he ran out of money. Stayed dead for a while but then it was arranged the he borrowed money from other PC's to pay for his resurrection again. Then he died some more. Finally, he obtained an Amulet of Life Protection - if you die your life force remains safely tucked away in the amulet and you don't have to be raised, just put back into a functional corpse. Took a fireball, which killed him AND melted the amulet. He was, by the original rules, far over the limit of how many times he should have been permitted to be raised. The DM was still sympathetic and willing to basically toss all resurrection limitations out the window, but the PC was at that point WOEFULLY in debt with no prospects of earning enough by adventuring to pay it all back, much less start to accumulate money of his own again. He elected to remain dead.

 

[ccs]

On occasion.
Sometimes it ruin the end/story/etc
Sometimes it's just been time to move on to a different character.
Other times it's just not the right moment to bring the character back.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm doing it right now.

 

[Shiroiken]

Only once, and not technically the way the OP intended. I was a paladin to the goddess of beauty, and after a crippling battle, the only was to be brought back was via reincarnation. The result was an orc... which I took to mean my goddess had forsaken me. I asked the druid if the spell could be cast again, but we didn't have the resources. I decided I'd rather die than remain such an abominable creature, and told the party to leave my remains for the jackals.

 

[Fauchard1520]

Only once, and not technically the way the OP intended. I was a paladin to the goddess of beauty, and after a crippling battle, the only was to be brought back was via reincarnation. The result was an orc... which I took to mean my goddess had forsaken me. I asked the druid if the spell could be cast again, but we didn't have the resources. I decided I'd rather die than remain such an abominable creature, and told the party to leave my remains for the jackals.

But like... What if you were being tested by your goddess? You know, to find the beauty in all things and stuff?

 

[delphonso]

Never been rezzed.

It hasn't come up in the last few years as I tend to play healers and my GMs have been generally not very brutal.

I remember two times a character died and why I chose not to come back.

Qui-quay, the Gnoll Barbarian (and other classes as the campaign was very long)
This was one of my first long term characters. Stupid concept and problematic for the team dynamic, but loved by all the players, myself included. When he finally did die, it was the result of a massive crit when at low health. At that point I was sort of tired of playing him. He had fallen behind the party in damage output, and we were basically just going from combat to combat at this point.

? the summoner. (Don't even remember the name)
This character died in our first session with a new DM. Not someone I liked to begin with, he gave us outrageously difficult battles with no chances to heal or recover. Ignored our comments on this. Worse, spell casters became useless as we couldn't recover our spells. Worst, he controlled my summoned creatures and just had them wander off into the forest. When this character died, another player said they could drag them to a temple for ressurection. I politely refused and then left the campaign. Seeing the exit strategy, a few other players followed suit in the next combat.

 

[Oofta]

I've never had one of my PCs brought back from the dead because the only ones that die are elves. In earlier editions they couldn't be brought back and then they were too low a level to have the resources (I think I had one make it to 3rd level). After a while even in campaigns where it was effectively free I simply accepted the curse.

Any elf PC I play will not survive past 3rd level.

 

[pogre]

I had a cleric with a do not res order with the rest of the party. It was a role playing choice for that particular character.

Naturally, he rose to a high level and retired.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've never had a character raised or resurrected. Most of my character deaths have either been of the sort that were good deaths that bringing them back from would've been anti-climactic, deaths in games without a raise mechanic, or deaths of the sort where we all died and never played that game (or sometimes with that DM/GM) again.