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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9534979" data-attributes="member: 6790260">They don't, but they could learn. They do know they can call on his aid in dire need. This was my compromise; the characters found out Shen was a dragon, and decided to ask him for his aid. I, as GM, did not want to make this the "Tenryu Shen GMPC Show", so I proposed a compromise. Shen is operating undercover (tracking a black dragon hiding in the city, can't show his true power), so he gave the party the earrings. They know the white earrings allow communication and the red ones can be crushed to call on Shen's aid. They have not investigated the earrings any further, other than learning that they each carry a tiny piece of Shen's soul, and thus he is always with them (but politely avoids being "eyes on" most of the time). Thus, while the benefit is there and they could discover it if they went looking, they haven't, so they don't know about that part.Oh, I certainly wouldn't do that. And if you go recklessly seeking death? That ain't random no more, you want a death, you can absolutely have one! The offer is simply there if the player would prefer to continue playing that PC, even if the PC must change as a result of the prices paid for their revival/survival.Basically, I just don't care for "random orc #12 killed you with a lucky crit" or "random <behir/beholder/whatever> hit you with an instant-death move and you failed your one save to avoid it" stuff, because I find those deaths incredibly boring and story-ending. I don't think such deaths add anything particularly worthwhile to a game I'm running. So, if the player would prefer that that event have some other permanent and problematic consequence that isn't death? We'll work it out. If they're totally cool with the character dying and staying dead? No worries, that's as easy as doing nothing whatever, and I am a connoisseur of doing nothing whatever.And, I should note, one of my favorite tropes, both as player and as GM, is the separated party (lone dead soul, the rest having to struggle on without them) revealing things about their relationship that the players can know, but the characters don't, creating a rare form of purely sincere, positive dramatic irony. Those sorts of moments are what allow silly or irreverent characters show how much their (so-called) stuffy and bossy allies matter to them, or that stuffy-and-bossy character revealing how proud they are about what the dead irreverent character had done, etc. That sort of stuff is the drama and interaction I live for in TTRPG play, so I am 110% down for a "you must journey your way through the Underworld while your friends figure out a way to revive you" type scenario. That sort of thing is so, so satisfying when the group is on board for it.I mean, probably? But I was already pretty sensitive about PC deaths before that. Hell, I grieved more for the ally deaths in my favorite 4e campaign than the actual players of those characters did! (They also got better, but it was costly, each and every time.) That 4e game actually did have the bit I just mentioned in the previous paragraph, too. I still remember when the cheeky, irreverent dronesmith (it was a sci-fantasy game) petitioned a powerful AI to resurrect my character, not just spin up a brand-new body (resurrections cost a lot more resources, naturally.) She opened with the pragmatic. "He was the only one who heard the information we need. And..." She paused, despite herself. "And he was our friend."Those five words meant more to me as a player than many entire sessions of play, because it meant I had succeeded. I had portrayed someone stalwart, brave, and true--aka stodgy and law-bothering--who had genuinely inspired the person least like that, the person most likely to scoff at such outdated conceptions.</blockquote>

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