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

[The Crimson Binome]

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?

Never blame the player for their character dying, unless it was a result of obvious meta-gaming. Not every character is capable of surviving every situation, and the job of the player is to play the character, not to win at any cost.

If you're playing a combat-heavy game, and a character could die at any moment, then it may behoove you to have some NPCs with the party (or nearby) that a player can take over if their character dies unexpectedly.

Otherwise, let the player roll up a new character while everyone else continues playing, and contrive some way for that character to enter the game as soon as possible. This is also meta-gaming, of course, but a little meta-gaming is usually preferable to having one player sit out the game entirely.

 

[tglassy]

Yeah, I just remembered, I’vebeen the Candy DM so far. I ran a oneshot with some friends, a few of which had played before. We had, like, three weeks before we could allget together to play, so I had them role up new characters, give me theirbackgrounds, and I wove them all together. I even decided to have some of their old characters be NPC’s.

One of the old NPC’s, whichwas from 3.5e, and had a Mercurial longsword. Apparently, that meant that on a crit, it did 4x damage. I didn’t see anything like that in the DMG,so I decided a Vorpal Sword would work instead. Why not, right? The players were all starting at level 8, and he was going to be much stronger than them. And, he was going to be charmed by the BBEG and attack the party, forcingthem to fight their old character. Muahaha! Only I didn’t tell themthat I switched his Mercurial Longsword with a Vorpal Sword, which beheads on acrit.

His first attack against theirprimary fighter, the only one who could maybe go toe to toe with this guy, the first attack of the round, was a crit.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just take him out of the fightaltogether on the first round. Maybe, ifthey’d been fighting a while, and they were close to winning, but not in thefirst attack. There’s no coming backfrom a beheading. So, since I hadn’ttold them that anyway, I just mentally switched it to 4x damage, since they allknew about his sword anyway. The guy wasstill pissed, but at least he wound up coming out of it alive.

I don’t know when we’ll all beable to play again, since it was hard getting us together that first time, butI think I’m going to have them all role up a backup character, cause I need toget over this “I don’t want them to die” mentality. Otherwise, there’s just no tension!

 

[WarpedAcorn]

Character death doesn't seem super strict in 5th Edition, at least to me.

From a DM perspective, after the character has initially dropped and started bleeding out they have a minimum of 3 rounds on their own before death. That's a HUGE amount of time for someone to cast a healing spell, spare the dying, administer a potion, or stabilize with a Medicine check.

Its possible for the Character to take that extra point of damage that kills them from an AoE, but I don't think most DM's are going to have an NPC take the time to just kill a character. But if that happens, you still have options to Raise them with a multitude of spells including a very accessible Revivify. Otherwise the party can still take the body and have someone in town cast a Raise Dead or Reincarnate to keep the character around.

So really TPK's are the only instance I see where Characters should legitimately be dieing without the option of coming back.


That being said, lets say a Character dies in the first fight of the adventure, you are nowhere near a town or healer to revive, and your friends had planned on playing for another 3 hours. You can get creative and do something like have the Spirit of the Character stick around and participate in as much of the game you like (maybe only the other PC's can see him, or maybe he can also participate in Combat but only distract enemies and use the Help action). Or you can give control of an NPC to them for the remainder of the session. Maybe Glenda the Good Witch dies and until the party can revive her the player is given the option to control Markus, the Thug mercenary (straight out of the Monster Manual).

Character death is also sometimes a way to try something new out, so although Glenda died...maybe the Player is more interested in just grabbing a new character and leaving Glenda dead. Then all it takes is some creative storytelling to add in the new character. Like iserith said, having a back-up character on hand is always useful. After one of my recent characters almost died I went ahead and drew up a backup for if he dies.

 

[Umbran]

"How to deal with player death?"

Depends on the player, I guess. For almost every player, there's a lot of tears, a suspension of gaming, and a somber occasion when people wear suits .... oh, you meant characters?

You joke, but... I lost one of my regular group to brain cancer a while back. Talking about how to handle grief among a gaming group might make for a good thread, honestly.

But, as for character death - I tend to construct/run my sessions with rising action, so the chances of dying early or mid-session, while not zero, are much lower than at the end. And, my sessions are usually short weeknight things, so the worst that typically happens is that they have to kibbitz for an hour or so. Not a huge deal.

But, there's always a time when things go pear shaped... and how to handle it depends on the situation.

In long-running games, where people have become attached to their PCs, the player may not be interested in continuing the session. If the character they've played for years is suddenly well and truly dead, the player is apt to be unhappy, and not really interested in playing for a bit. Make sure they *want* to be engaged before trying to give them options.

Many groups I have worked with for games that have some sort of resurrection, will usually try to retreat and enact that resurrection if at all possible. This can solve your problem for you. I have also handed over minor NPCs to player control. Some player will happy take on the role of tactical play of monsters, which can keep them happily occupied for an afternoon, if your'e running a combat heavy session.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just take him out of the fightaltogether on the first round.Maybe, ifthey’d been fighting a while, and they were close to winning, but not in thefirst attack.There’s no coming backfrom a beheading.So, since I hadn’ttold them that anyway, I just mentally switched it to 4x damage, since they allknew about his sword anyway.The guy wasstill pissed, but at least he wound up coming out of it alive.

You're talking about translating a 3.5 character into 5E, right?

In the description of the Vorpal Sword for 5E, it says that it doesn't work on anything that is too large to behead, or on PCs or (IIRC) anyone with legendary actions. In those cases, it just does an extra (IIRC) 6d6 damage on a crit.

So in this case, it looks like the designers anticipated this situation, and specifically designed the rules to avoid that happening. Your impromptu house ruling was right on target.

 

[iserith]

Yeah, I just remembered, I’vebeen the Candy DM so far. I ran a oneshot with some friends, a few of which had played before.We had, like, three weeks before we could allget together to play, so I had them role up new characters, give me theirbackgrounds, and I wove them all together.I even decided to have some of their old characters be NPC’s.

One of the old NPC’s, whichwas from 3.5e, and had a Mercurial longsword. Apparently, that meant that on a crit, it did 4x damage.I didn’t see anything like that in the DMG,so I decided a Vorpal Sword would work instead. Why not, right? The players were all starting at level 8, and he was going to be much stronger than them. And, he was going to be charmed by the BBEG and attack the party, forcingthem to fight their old character.Muahaha!Only I didn’t tell themthat I switched his Mercurial Longsword with a Vorpal Sword, which beheads on acrit.

His first attack against theirprimary fighter, the only one who could maybe go toe to toe with this guy, the first attack of the round, was a crit.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just take him out of the fightaltogether on the first round.Maybe, ifthey’d been fighting a while, and they were close to winning, but not in thefirst attack.There’s no coming backfrom a beheading.So, since I hadn’ttold them that anyway, I just mentally switched it to 4x damage, since they allknew about his sword anyway.The guy wasstill pissed, but at least he wound up coming out of it alive.

Honestly, that was probably a good call because swapping the sword like that could be seen as a "gotcha" by the players. They had an expectation of one thing and it would have been something else entirely which can be viewed as unfair. I'm an advocate for always telegraphing things like this so that the players can potentially make decisions to change their fate.

I don’t know when we’ll all beable to play again, since it was hard getting us together that first time, butI think I’m going to have them all role up a backup character, cause I need toget over this “I don’t want them to die” mentality. Otherwise, there’s just no tension!

I know what you mean, but you can have plenty of tension in a game without death on the line. It's just a matter of threatening the PCs' goals rather than their pools of hit points. (See, for example, my short-form scenario Seahorse Run. Death is very unlikely unless the PCs provoke the shark, but they can still lose.) That requires the players actually caring about those goals though!

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

That's kind of lame to me, I'd make the vorpal weapon truly vorpal in all his horrific glory when the players run into one.

 

[tglassy]

All that said I do have a paladin who bargained his soul against obtaining the book of vile darkness for a demon in order to get wings so he could fly to the temple at the end, as he was the only one without means to do so. He was an oathbreaker at the time, and figured his soul was forfeit anyway. He agreed, and the BBEG had the Book of Vile Darkness. Only, by the time they'd gotten there, he'd had a change of heart, and wanted to repent. Only now, he's got the book, and 30 days to give it to the demon or he forfeits his soul.

And then he threw the darn thing into a blessed spring of his goddess, as a show of his newly renewed faith, and I allowed that to be his show of repentance to regain his vows. It dissolved and was destroyed. So now he has 30 days to figure out how to break a demon's curse or his soul is heading to the abyss. And I have told him that unless he figures out a way out of it, that is going to happen.

I did give him a possible way out, though. I allowed one of the party, a necromancer, to start with the Eye of Vecna, because I really, really wanted him to use it and have his soul sucked out of his body and replaced with a puppet under my control. And he agreed! Ha! Moron! He only used it once, and it was a great use, and luckily for him he didn't die, but man, I can't wait!

So, during the one shot, They came across a Gas Spore, which was spawned by a dead beholder. When they popped it, one of them got infected with the gas, and in the manual, it says sometimes when infected you will get a vision of the dead beholder's memories, so I had one of them have a vision of a far away Beholder's lair, where the Hand of Vecna was. Of course, the necromancer wants the Hand, now, and convinced the others to go with him to find it. Since the eye and hand together can cast Wish, that would free the paladin from his contract, I think. That's the direction of the next game, if we ever get to it, though I'm going to have it take more than just one session to get there. They're all only level 8, and I'm not giving both the hand and eye to someone who's only level 8, so I've gotta think of something to get them to level 10, or preferably 12, before I start giving that kind of power away, and that's really still too early, IMO.

So yeah, I'll need to up my A game going forward. If they're going to be going after things as powerful as the artifacts of Vecna, then I want them to be in mortal peril. I just need to get less squeamish about letting them die.

 

[tglassy]

That's kind of lame to me, I'd make the vorpal weapon truly vorpal in all his horrific glory when the players run into one.

I agree. I'm going to let another enemy have it in the future, and just leave it. I just couldn't do that to them in the first fight of the big climactic battle they'd all been waiting for. I didn't have the heart.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That's kind of lame to me, I'd make the vorpal weapon truly vorpal in all his horrific glory when the players run into one.

If vorpal weapons had remained vorpal against the PCs, then their fight against the Balor (at level 9) would have ended much differently.

It's just a part of the overall nerfing of anything that might inconvenience the players in any way. Honestly, the monsters in this edition are less scary than they've ever been. It's kind of disappointing.