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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Destan" data-source="post: 1930646" data-attributes="member: 12157">Hi all.In a couple weeks my group and I will be finishing a campaign that's lasted a little over three years.  The PCs are about 16-17th level.  The finale will consist of only one evening's gaming (probably 8 PM - 4 AM).  So about 8 hours.  The next day we'll embark on a new campaign with 1st-level guys, and I get to hand the DM hat over to one of the players.This one-shot finale will be almost entirely hack-n-slash.  The roleplaying has been done, and now it's time to see if the PCs win (and the world survives) or they lose (and the world dies).  Pretty dang standard, I s'pose.What I'm struggling with - and here's the point of my post - is that I'm not sure how to handle individual character's deaths.  Believe me - there will be some.  A TPK would, in effect, be easier - everyone would be a goner, and we could march into the new campaign.  I don't know how to handle it if a guy dies early on in the evening.  It's the campaign's climax and the end of a lot of hard work on the PCs' parts; I'd hate to have them become a spectator.  On the other hand, the final battles are occurring in a place that - even at the furthest stretch of imagination - doesn't make it easy to explain how a "back-up" character could arrive on-scene.Hence, I was wondering how you cats handle the introduction of back-up characters.  Mind you - we only meet about 2-3 times yearly, so that makes a little more difficult on any player whose characters perishes.  He'll be losing out on game time that's of a very limited quantity.  Some of my players throw down cash to fly into the area, too.I figure I have a couple options as to how to handle this:1) A character dies, and the PC watches until the campaign finishes.2) A character dies, and we hand wave a new back-up character into the mix, without worrying about the "realism" of said back-up's arrival.I've asked my PCs how they want to handle this, so that may make this post a moot point.I'm thinking of splitting it down the middle.  If a guy dies in the first four hours, we introduce a back-up for him.  If he dies in the second half, however, he'll have to cheer on his buddies (or, perhaps, help me run some baddies in an effort to get some of his friends to join him on the sidelines).Not sure if there's a "good" way to handle this.  If you have any ideas or, even better, experiences with this sort of thing - I'd love to hear them.Happy New Year!Pudgy DEdit: Other pertinent info - teleportation, plane shift, wind walk, etc. and other types of magic will be unavailable.  The PCs won't be able to jump back to civilization to lick their wounds.  There's also a "ticking clock" that forces them to keep a sense of urgency.  I'm not trying to nerf their capabilities, and normally I follow Monte's maxim to allow PCs to use hard-earned spells/talents, but this is a bit of a special circumstance.  Finally, one guy in a group of 7 PCs has the ability to resurrect his fellows, but if he buys the farm, we're back to my original question.</blockquote>

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