There is not a magical answer, but it is actually easier to deal with at lower levels than higher. You might hand waive the first death, and actually allow them to continue. It depends just as much on the player as the DM. Especially if the player takes a long time to develop a concept or is married to the current one. You should also review how easy you want death to occur, and adjust the rules. You could implement a three strikes and you are out policy to weed out players that ignore any consequences.
D&D 5E How to deal with player death?
- Thread starter tglassy
- Start date
S
Sunseeker
Guest
My approach:
Session 0: Tell all the players to roll a backup character, tell them that character will likely die horribly and make two more. Usually after telling them that they ought to have at least 6 backup characters they get the picture that they should usually have one. I allow them to keep that character "AvPL -2" so that when they bring them in they'll be behind, but not so far as to risk getting squashed once again.
Session 45: Bob died. We are sad. But Bob WAS NOT PREPARED! and did not bring his backup character. Bob may make a new character while the party continues on, or run some minor NPC (if available) during the game, but otherwise Bob sits out until his new character is done. The DM then wiggles his fingers and NuBob shows up, a straggler from another adventuring party, some poor sap suckered into the woods by faeries or whatever. I'll usually attach a quest to NuBob to help give the party a reason to let him join.
Session 66: Joe died. Joe had his backup Jim ready. The party encounters Jim somewhere along the road and Jim joins the party, yay!
So yes, I tell my players to be prepared, or be prepared to sit out the session until they have made a new character. The group may choose to keep playing, take a break or whatever, I'll leave the call up to them, they may think now's a good time to grab some pizza or just to stop for the night. But if they want to and I'm ready the party rolls on.
Sometimes we have funerals if it's a reasonable possibility to take the body back to a town and give it a proper burial. PCs that don't just die day one from landing on a pointy stick deserve to be remembered.
We have one guy in our party who is dying almost every other session. I don't know if its bad luck or he's just being stupid or what at this point, but he dutifully rolls up a new character each and every time, so....okay man.
Session 0: Tell all the players to roll a backup character, tell them that character will likely die horribly and make two more. Usually after telling them that they ought to have at least 6 backup characters they get the picture that they should usually have one. I allow them to keep that character "AvPL -2" so that when they bring them in they'll be behind, but not so far as to risk getting squashed once again.
Session 45: Bob died. We are sad. But Bob WAS NOT PREPARED! and did not bring his backup character. Bob may make a new character while the party continues on, or run some minor NPC (if available) during the game, but otherwise Bob sits out until his new character is done. The DM then wiggles his fingers and NuBob shows up, a straggler from another adventuring party, some poor sap suckered into the woods by faeries or whatever. I'll usually attach a quest to NuBob to help give the party a reason to let him join.
Session 66: Joe died. Joe had his backup Jim ready. The party encounters Jim somewhere along the road and Jim joins the party, yay!
So yes, I tell my players to be prepared, or be prepared to sit out the session until they have made a new character. The group may choose to keep playing, take a break or whatever, I'll leave the call up to them, they may think now's a good time to grab some pizza or just to stop for the night. But if they want to and I'm ready the party rolls on.
Sometimes we have funerals if it's a reasonable possibility to take the body back to a town and give it a proper burial. PCs that don't just die day one from landing on a pointy stick deserve to be remembered.
We have one guy in our party who is dying almost every other session. I don't know if its bad luck or he's just being stupid or what at this point, but he dutifully rolls up a new character each and every time, so....okay man.
It depends on the kind of campaign you're running. Old School, where everybody has multiple characters, usually at various levels, death means that character is gone forever (baring magic, of course), and the player can make more characters. In most modern games, each player only has 1 PC, they should make a new character during the session (unless they died at the end), giving the DM an idea about the characters, so they can figure out a good spot to introduce him (I've seen incomplete PCs get introduced and play for much of the session before the character was completely done). I've also seen a coin-op game, where there were multiple PCs ready, and you had to pay $1 to have them suddenly materialize (it was a Tomb of Horrors charity event).
Lol, my brothers are avid video gamers, and we were laughing the other day on how much money the DM could make if he were to institute "Micro-transactions". Need a health potion? $.50. Want another spell slot? $1. Want to reroll that ability check? $1. Oh, looks like you died. Want to come back? $5. Want to buy a pack of rerolls you can use later? $10.
I'm not very hardcore with death, although sometimes I would like to be. If a character dies, I usually ask the player if they want to roll a new one or keep that one; sometime players are just bored with them, so it's good to give a way out. If they want to keep it, I just basically resurrect the character and everyone agrees the party is "in debt" for the cost, or throw in some down time where they head back to the city to get the resurrection. My bark is worse than my bite, when it comes to this.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
PC death happens.
Either resurrect or reroll. Or actually both last time... it really depends on the situation.
I also make it dependend on the circumstances. Very unlicky death? Maybe even to help othe PCs. Then it will be relatively easier than if the PC died to to player stupidity.
Either resurrect or reroll. Or actually both last time... it really depends on the situation.
I also make it dependend on the circumstances. Very unlicky death? Maybe even to help othe PCs. Then it will be relatively easier than if the PC died to to player stupidity.
I think what I'm going to do is give them a choice: keep character, but with special rules, or role a new one. Special rules depending on whether the character was religious or not. Non religious characters will come back as a Revenant. Religious ones will come back as a Soulbound. I like that. Makes death not that attractive, while still letting them keep their character. Maybe getting their original body back can be part of a long term quest or something.
Yes there is. Several, actually.
Hawk Diesel
Adventurer
Typically, this is where a session 0 comes in handy. Basically, everyone agrees on a kind of difficulty level. If everyone is ok with the possibility of character death, then everyone makes a backup character, just in case. If people expect characters to die at any moment and quite often, come prepared with multiple characters. If people want to be able to walk up to a dragon and kick it in the ass knowing they'll walk away (mostly) unscathed... well then... that's a little boring but you and your group know the deal.
Imaculata
Hero
Seems to me like you underestimated the damage of the monster you threw at your players. Dragons are deadly opponents. If you don't want your players to die, don't throw a dragon at them.
But more importantly, realize that a character being reduced to zero hit points is not immediately dead. They can be stabilized and healed. As long as there is one player left standing, they'll probably survive. You should never be afraid to reduce a character to zero hit points.
Also, a dragon's breath attack is a cone. So unless your players are using terrible positioning, only 1 or 2 of them should get hit by it. And afterwards it is on a long recharge.
As a last resort, you can always have a dragon fly away if it considers its prey not worth its time.
