D&D 5E How to deal with player death?

[tglassy]

I'm a fairly new DM. I've yet to have one of my people die, though I suppose I could have. Had a couple dragon fights where I didn't bring out the dragon's breath, though if I had there would have been TPK's all around. But that's not fun, and my players enjoyed their fights with a dragon, especially one who actually basically killed a young green dragon all on his own because the dragon rolled horribly the entire time and he succeeded on every check for, like, ten minutes straight. It was amazing.

Anyway, if the young green dragon had spit acid on him, he'd have died. End of story.

So, I wanted some advice on player death. At the end of an adventure, fine. They die, they need to role a new character next week, yadda yadda. But what if they die in the first encounter of the evening? As in, straight out die? Should I have them role a new character right then and there? That takes time, and would cut in to everyone else's playtime. Do I make them just sit there and stare at the other players and not do anything? That's not fun. I suppose I could have the group go find a way to bring him back to life, but again, that's boring for the player who died, especially if the group doesn't have the means to do so.

I had thought about doing something like make them into a Revenant to finish out the adventure, or use the homebrew Soulbound that I found a week ago (that seemed interesting), you know, transform their character in some way. This is obviously before anyone learns how to raise the dead.

Or should I just say "You suck. You died. Start rolling a new character while we move on." And they can join in when they're ready?

What do y'all do?

 

[jasper]

Always have a back up PC before hand. Back in 1e a pc only took 5 minutes to roll up but now days it takes. It will be up to dm to decide what level the new pc comes in. When to insert the PC is up to dm too. He can go poof he there. Or come up with in game reason.
I do not like people sitting out of the game more than a 1/2 hour. Even if in game there is no logic reason to insert the pc.
Oh hi welcome to enworld and introduce yourself. jasper old fart being gaming off and on since 1980.

 

[tglassy]

Hello jasper, and thanks for your suggestion. I actually joined up about a month before the system went bye bye, so all my old threads have been lost. I should probably go introduce myself, though.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[tglassy]

I really like that last rule.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

PC death is marked with by DM bonus shooters in celebration.
Player death is dealt with by a funeral and shooters in commemoration of the lost friend.

 

[tglassy]

Lol. Yeah. I realized that after I posted. Decided to keep the name.

 

[iserith]

Character death is not a problem in my view as long as you have a plan for it.

In general, my plan is to recommend all players have a backup character on hand. Further, I ask them to establish that the character has some existing relationship with the rest of the party so that bringing them into play makes fictional sense and can be done easily on the fly. I don't want players sitting around creating characters or waiting for us to come up with a good reason for a new adventurer to join the party. I want them back in play as quickly as possible.

It's worth noting that this plan can vary with the theme of the campaign. The way you handle it in one campaign might be different from another. In a particularly deadly campaign, you might have the players each create a "tree" of characters that level up at the same time and can be rotated in easily. In one with a superheroic theme, you might take death off the table entirely - the PC is just incapacitated for a time if it suffers massive damage or fails three death saves. And so on.

 

[ccs]

1) Game pauses for a moment while we all watch the players new stat rolls (we roll for stats in our games & the rolls have to be done in front of the group).

2) Some discussion is had concerning what lv & what amount of gear the new character stats with. Varies on a case by case basis.

3) The player spends as much time creating the new character as they need while the rest of us play on.
If they want they can help control monsters or NPCs.

4) Once the new character is finished the game pauses again as the DM looks it over, asks questions, etc. Then the new character gets worked into play when it seems to make sense/fit. That might be in a few minutes, it might be the next session. It varies based upon what's going on.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Usually when I have a dead PC and he rolls up his new one I find some often ridiculous way to add that character back in, a captive of the next group of baddies that are killed or something like that.