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.