D&D 5E (2014) How many PCs have you had die?

[Ralif Redhammer]

Hmm, as far as death toll as a DM, six characters or so in my almost 30 years of running games.

Two were killed by Strahd (if you’re going to go, getting killed by a legend isn’t so bad), and one must have been a surly DM day for me, as it involved a kobold wielding a Nine Lives Stealer.

 

[JonnyP71]

One in 5E so far, but he got Reincarnated.

He was a Half Orc, he came back as a High Elf - who cannot speak Elven and who still has the manners of a Half Orc.

He's looking for his brother... this could now be awkward.

 

[Greg Benage]

None that revivify couldn't handle.

 

[hejtmane]

TMNT was a good game. Turtles in Space!

Loved TMNT I preferred the first edition when it was more granular then the 2nd edition

 

[Morinth]

One in 5E so far, but he got Reincarnated.

He was a Half Orc, he came back as a High Elf - who cannot speak Elven and who still has the manners of a Half Orc.

He's looking for his brother... this could now be awkward.

I kinda like this sort of thing. You get the dire consequences associated with a character death, but you still get to continue that character's story and through-line. And I think it makes for an interesting story angle. What happens when this character comes up against a society of high elves? They will probably not take too kindly to him, they will sense his wrongness immediately. They will respond in interesting ways, I think.

 

[Kite474]

Lets see from 5e alone? That would be a grand total of Zero. This is mainly due to the fact that my GM does not really enjoy killing PC's. In his words "Really it does not actually accomplish much when you think about it. Congrats your dead, story's over, start a new character you don't care nearly as much about." While I don't really agree I can more than understand his sentiment.

As for my short 3 years of table top. That would be around.... 3 technically 4

A Sechnal from Rouge Trader (If the surgery complications didnt kill him the fall would have_
A Pirate Bard for a One Piece Savage Worlds game. (Though he sort of came back)
A Soulknife/Agis/Metaforge from Pathfinder (I was utterly crushed about that one)
A young Squire (that was actually his name too) From a Mouseguard game.

 

[Sunseeker]

Dead dead? Uh, one. I challenged a higher-level creature (which I had no idea was higher level at the time) to a fight and lost. Otherwise, none. It's absurdly hard to die in this edition. When I've DMed? I think 3 or 4. Mostly because they were morons and deserved it. The table laughed. They didn't learn, the process repeated.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I haven't been counting, but it's not an unusual occurrence. A PC gets hit, knocked down to a few hps, then hit harder and instantly killed. A TPK you can usually see coming and softball, but sudden PC deaths can happen, well, suddenly.

It's mainly just a 1st-level bug, though, after a few levels the same rule makes instant kills very unlikely.

 

[DeathMutant]

As a DM, I have never killed a PC but my players have(!) In one (Adventurers League) game, an enemy used non-lethal damage to take-out a PC but the rest of the party just assumed she was dead and unloaded 2 high-damage area effect spells that included her KOed body within them and killed her. Ironically, by killing her they actually saved her! The reason the enemy knocked her out was to prepare her body for an allied (and hidden nearby) Intellect Devourer to consume her brain. The Intellect Devourer can only consume the brain of a living, incapacitated creature and Revify/Raise Dead does not restore missing body parts (like brains) so, by killing her, they protected her body so it *could* be raised.

 

[Fanaelialae]

In 5e, two PC deaths. One was a Thief Rogue and the other a Vengeance Paladin. Both were somewhere around 8th level, I think.

However, there have been a lot more deaths if you include NPC henchmen. I couldn't give you an exact number, but it's somewhere around a dozen I think. I attribute the difference in survival rates to the fact that the NPCs are usually lower level, and when it's a choice between saving a PC and saving an NPC, the players will almost always choose the PC. Also, one of the campaigns is set in the Underdark where the henchmen were primarily expendable slaves (until the party came across a deck of many things and all the evil PCs happened to draw the Balance card; now we're the good guys). That campaign makes up at least 50% of the henchman turnover by itself.